Red Cross: Iraqi Situation Getting Worse (Mothers Appeal For Bodies To Be Picked Up From Streets)

Source: Associated Press

Red Cross: Iraqi Situation Getting Worse

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
Associated Press Writer
April 11, 2007, 1:54 PM EDT

GENEVA -- Millions of Iraqis are in a "disastrous" situation that is getting worse, with mothers appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school, the international Red Cross said Wednesday.

The report, "Civilians without Protection: The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq," was produced over the past two to three weeks, a spokesman said -- well after the stepped-up American-led military operations in the capital began Feb. 14.

The report went beyond the International Committee of the Red Cross' usual appeals for all sides to protect civilians as required by the Geneva Conventions. It added photographs and quotes from the civilians to describe the situation.

"Once I was called to an explosion site," it quoted a young Baghdad humanitarian worker named Saad as saying. "There I saw a 4-year-old boy sitting beside his mother's body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened."

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Red Cross: Iraq Is 'Ever-Worsening'

ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, The Associated Press

The situation for civilians in Iraq is "ever-worsening," even though security in some places has improved as a result of stepped-up efforts by U.S.-led multinational forces, the international Red Cross said Wednesday. Thousands of bodies lie unclaimed in mortuaries, with family members either unaware that they are there or too afraid to go to recover them, according to a key official with the neutral agency. Medical professionals also have been fleeing the country after cases where their colleagues were killed or abducted, the group said. "Whatever operation that is today under way, and that may be taken tomorrow and in the weeks after, to improve the security of civilians on the ground may have an effect in the medium term," said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC...

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