The Hospital

KISANGANI, Congo, June 8 (Reuters) – Women and children, some
screaming and crying, sprint barefoot up the steps of the hospital as
gunbattles erupt and a black plume of smoke rises from a fresh mortar
impact just 100 (yards) meters away.

Inside the university hospital’s crumbling pink halls, fresh pools of blood stain floors littered with abandoned syringes.

Dozens of civilians – the wounded and their families – sit huddled
against the walls, crouching anxiously on dirty foam mattresses as
shells explode outside on Thursday afternoon.

Among them are children, some with fragments in their heads, backs
and stomachs. Some rooms are filled with wounded soldiers, their
automatic rifles stacked in corners.

In an operating theatre, a surgeon and four assistants work with
un-sterilized surgical knives to amputate one man’s left leg after it
was torn apart by shrapnel earlier on Thursday. Doctors cut through it
like a piece of raw meat.

The Congolese city of Kisangani is clearly not a city to get wounded in.

Ugandan and Rwandan troops – former allies in a chaotic war that has
torn apart the Democratic Republic of the Congo since August 1998 –
have fought intense, almost ceaseless artillery duels from opposite
sides of Kisangani since Monday morning.

It is the third time the rival armies’ struggle for control of this
diamond-rich city has exploded into violence and once again it is
civilians who are suffering most.

The
fading, cream-coloured concrete building of the university hospital
serves as a respite not only for the sick but also as shelter for
hundreds of people fleeing the fighting.

The battles have sent thousands of mortar bombs thundering down
across the city centre, tearing apart corrugated iron-roof houses and
sending shrapnel flying in all directions.

TERRIBLE WOUNDS, NO SUPPLIES

With the city’s airports closed, its roads cut off and no running
water or electricity, the hospital has already run out of most medical
supplies.

“We have nothing here. We are in urgent need of everything,” said Dieudonne Mata, one of the city’s few surgeons.

Mata, wearing a blue surgical mask, spoke with one gloved hand
inside a conscious man’s stomach, trying to retrieve a shell fragment.

“We’ve been working 24 hours a day since Monday. We have few
medicines, no proper anaesthetics. We need surgical supplies, fuel to
run the generator,” he said.

One man died earlier in the day for lack of blood after having a bullet extracted from his gut without anaesthesia.

Kisangani’s other main hospital was reportedly hit by shelling on Thursday but it was virtually impossible to reach.

Eric Kambale, a 23-year-old student with a bullet still lodged in
his upper right thigh, crouches on a mattress in the university
hospital hallway waiting for treatment.

“This morning I went out to get water – we haven’t had any food or water for four days – and I got hit,” Kambale said.

“Somebody has to do something. Who gave these foreigners the right
to fight in our country? We want them to leave. But nobody is doing
anything.”

Mobs of people, visibly angry at foreigners for destroying their city, surrounded journalists and threatened some of them.

Doctors said they have received over 60 injured patients since
Monday and five have died but most civilians, pinned down in their
houses, are unable to come in for treatment.

Witnesses said dead bodies in some parts of town have been covered
with blankets where they were killed, the living around them unable to
bury them because of the incessant clashes.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.