Baghdad maternity hospital 'bombed'

Hospital sources and witnesses quoted by Reuters news agency said there were a number of casualties and some damage at the hospital.

The BBC's Rageh Omaar, who is in Baghdad, said the Red Crescent hospital in the city is said to have been hit in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The reports came after doctors at a hospital in central Iraq told the BBC that they had dealt with more than 250 fatalities since the start of the US-led war.

In Baghdad, Red Crescent official Abdel-Hameed Salim told Reuters: "There were air raids. Some 25 people who work and live in the area were wounded. Three of our Red Crescent staff were also wounded."

In a statement, US Central Command said: "US Central Command is looking into an allegation that coalition aircraft bombed a Red Crescent maternity hospital in Baghdad, Iraq."

It added: "Coalition forces target only legitimate military targets and go to great lengths to minimise civilian casualties and damage to civilian facilities."

There has been no official Iraqi statement on the reported incident.

Iraqi authorities said on Wednesday that at least 55 civilians had been killed by coalition forces in attacks on Baghdad and other cities in the past 24 hours.

At least 33 of the victims are reported to have died when US helicopter gunships strafed a residential neighbourhood in the city of Hilla on Tuesday.

Aid agencies say they are increasingly worried about the mounting number of civilian victims of the war.

Nasariya and Hilla

Doctors at the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Nasariya said all of the 250-plus deaths they had dealt with were the result of American bombing - and most were civilians.

They said many homes and schools, which were near military targets in the city, had been hit.

They added that they had treated more than 1000 injuries.

On Tuesday, officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - accompanied by Iraqi colleagues - visited a hospital in Hilla, about 100 kilometres (70 miles) south of Baghdad.

ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani said the team "witnessed a vehicle transporting bodies of men, women and children to the hospital and in the hospital they saw also some 300 injured people and it was very clear that this was the result of heavy fighting and bombings".

The Red Cross said the hospital was completely unable to cope.

Propaganda war

BBC defence analyst Stephen Dalziel says the US-led forces have gone out of their way to try to show that this war is against the regime of Saddam Hussein, not the Iraqi people.

He says inevitably, though, there have been civilian casualties and in a war being fought under the constant gaze of television cameras, both sides have realised how crucial the propaganda war is.

The United States has admitted shooting dead seven women and children after their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in Najaf on Monday, but said "the climate established by the Iraqi regime" had contributed to the incident.

The human rights organisation, Amnesty International has called on Washington to conduct an independent investigation into the Najaf killings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2909925.stm