- Title: LEBANON: Wounded Syrians arrive for treatment
- Date: 11th March 2012
- Summary: UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, NORTHERN LEBANON (MARCH 9, 2012) (REUTERS) MEDICS WALKING OUTSIDE HOSPITAL AS LEBANESE RED CROSS AMBULANCE DELIVERS WOUNDED SYRIAN WHO HAS JUST ARRIVED WOUNDED SYRIAN BEING CARRIED INTO HOSPITAL ON GURNEY WOUNDED MAN ON GURNEY WITH WOUNDS TO HIS FACE WOUNDED MAN'S LEGS/MEDICS PREPARING TO MOVE HIM INTO A HOSPITAL BED RED CROSS MEDICS/MORE OF THE
- Embargoed: 26th March 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Lebanon, Lebanon
- Country: Lebanon
- Topics: Crime,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVACQ3JKDC4DPVAPCEKMIAVHYRRI
- Story Text: In this hospital in northern Lebanon, there is a steady flow of wounded arriving from Syria. On Friday (March 9), hospital staff rushed outside to receive a Syrian man who was seriously wounded when he stepped on a landmine on the Syrian-Lebanese border.
Hospital staff say they have received some 37 wounded from Syria so far this month. In February, the hospital treated 180 people with varying degrees of injuries.
In one of the hospital rooms lay a man with an amputated arm and shrapnel wounds to his body and head. He said it was the result of a rocket that landed two meters away from him during the Syrian government bombardment of Baba Amr neighbourhood in Homs last month. He arrived in Lebanon two days ago when it was too late to save his arm.
He urged the international community to help.
''I call on the international community and humanitarian aid groups to save the Syrian people from the real massacres that are being committed everyday, not only in Baba Amr. The story of Baba Amr will be repeated in the rest and the whole of the Syrian governorates if they do not a put an end to this,'' he said.
On Wednesday (March 7), the UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos on a visit to Syria said Baba Amr was ''completely destroyed'' as a result of the bombardment in which thousands are believed to have been either killed, wounded, or forced to flee.
Some of the wounded take the long and dangerous road to Lebanon to be treated because they fear the government's security forces.
"We cannot be treated in Syria's hospitals because in any hospital the security forces will enter and take the injured. If the wounded is pro-regime...well, there are no pro-regime wounded, and if they are anti-regime then they either kill them or they torture them to death," said one of the wounded who did not want to be identified.
He is also from Homs and said he had been shot twelve days before, but had only arrived in Lebanon two days earlier because the route was so dangerous.
"In Homs, there is the national hospital and the military hospital. Any wounded person who enters any hospital even the private hospital, the security forces will raid the hospital, the security forces and the Shabbeeha, and take the injured to the military hospital and they will kill them there.'' The Shabbeeha are armed men who assault protesters.
The United Nations said some 7,500 Syrians have been killed since the protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. The UN is sending its special envoy Kofi Annan to Syria on Saturday (March 10) to find a way to resolve the crisis. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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