Marines storm hospital

Health care facilities lack doctors and supplies.
RAMADI, Iraq (AP) -- Hundreds of U.S. Marines stormed through dimly lighted hallways of the largest hospital in western Iraq on Wednesday, taking control of a facility reportedly used by insurgents -- and encountering a regional health infrastructure in serious decay.
Members of al-Qaida in Iraq had been using the Ramadi General Hospital, a seven-story building with some 250 beds, to treat their wounded and fire on U.S. troops in the area, the Marines said.
They said wounded Iraqi police officers who had been taken to the hospital were later found beheaded.
Though there was no resistance during Wednesday's operation, the Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, said they found about a dozen triggering devices for roadside bombs hidden above the tiled ceiling of one office. They knocked down dozens of locked doors and searched medicine chests and storage closets for additional weapons.
Caught in the fighting
Hospitals are considered off-limits in traditional warfare. In western Ramadi, however, insurgents have fired on Marines from the rooftop of a women and children's hospital so often that patients were moved to a wing with fewer exposed windows.
The early-morning raid Wednesday exposed the wartime conditions that have endangered the wounded, sick and elderly in this city of 400,000 people. Doctors said they were struggling to provide basic care.
No ambulances operate in the city because drivers are afraid. Experienced physicians have fled the area, critical supplies are depleted and the number of traumatic war-related injuries has skyrocketed.
Just to reach the hospital, residents must negotiate bomb-saturated roads and gunbattles that often block the way.
Staff members also complained that key supplies were scarce. Faulty X-ray equipment produced scans that were barely visible. Shortages of medicine at the hospital force patients to pick up drugs from local pharmacies.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.