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IRAQ-KUWAIT DEMILITARIZED ZONE
Medical supplies pile up in fighting
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 3/26/2003
Like international aid agencies, the Kuwaiti government lacks the security assurances it needs to take humanitarian supplies over the border. Military officials first said that the town was secure three days ago, but Iraqi militias continued to fight. Yesterday, a British commander said that Umm Qasr was finally under control and that aid could be shipped in within 48 hours.
The United Nations has warned that a humanitarian crisis is brewing in southern Iraq. For now, the 12 tons of medical supplies are sitting in a prefabricated structure at a small camp for the UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission.
The UN workers usually based here were pulled out on the eve of war. Monday night they were replaced by a squadron of British civil engineers who planned within five days to build a pipeline over the border. It will deliver 2,000 cubic meters of water a day for civilians, internally displaced people, and coalition military personnel, "thus making the world a slightly better place," British Major Hugh Ward said cheerfully.
The Kuwaiti government will bring another 12 tons of medical supplies today, enough to set up a new hospital. Two hundred doctors, nurses, and other personnel are standing by to put the equipment to use.
"This is just waiting for the green light," said Dr. Ahmad al-Shatti of the Ministry of Health.
This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 3/26/2003.
t was so close and yet so far. Four ambulances and eight trucks, laden with 12 tons of medical supplies, arrived to help the people of Umm Qasr yesterday. Workers from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health unloaded stretchers, surgical tray tables, walkers, and boxes of latex gloves, antibiotics, and intravenous fluids. But they weren't unloading the supplies in Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water port. They were unloading them some 1,500 yards away, in a bleak stretch of desert in the demilitarized zone. The city could be seen on the other side of a high mud wall: buildings, a couple of water towers, and dozens of cranes clustered by the loading dock.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
