US forces indiscriminately shooting civilian vehicles including ambulances

Red Cross Suspends Baghdad Work; Canadian Killed
Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday it had temporarily suspended humanitarian operations in Baghdad because the situation in the city was "chaotic and unpredictable."

"Given the chaotic and totally unpredictable situation in the city, getting from one place to another involves incalculable risks," the ICRC said in a statement.

The Geneva-based agency said a Canadian staff member missing since Tuesday afternoon had been shot and killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was caught in crossfire.

"We have managed to recover the body. He was caught in a crossfire. It was not a targeted hit on our car. There was fighting," spokeswoman Nada Doumani said in Geneva. The dead staff member was 48-year-old Vatche Arslanian.

She said 12 other people were believed to have died in the incident when a number of vehicles were trapped in the midst of the fighting. But Doumani added that the other people aboard two Red Cross vehicles had managed to escape.

In a separate incident, two Belgian doctors working in a Baghdad hospital told Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis that two Iraqi brothers in urgent need of medical treatment had died when the ambulance they were traveling in came under fire on Wednesday afternoon from what they said were U.S. forces.

One doctor, Geert van Moorter, said he confronted a U.S. tank commander nearby over the incident. "His reply was that it (the ambulance) could have been full of explosives," he said.

HEAVY CROSSFIRE

ICRC spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin in Baghdad told CNN that ambulances had been unable to approach casualties in many parts of the city due to heavy crossfire as U.S. troops battled sporadic Iraqi resistance.

"Casualties have been seen on the roads, on some bridges, and there was no possibility of evacuating them, for the reason that there was immediate fire as soon as anybody was trying to approach," he said.

The delay in reaching casualties in Baghdad could prove fatal in many cases, Huguenin-Benjamin said.

"The problem is not the lack of medicine in the hospitals. The problem is the lack of respect for ambulances and respect for casualties, to give a chance for a minimum of security for people to be evacuated," he said.

The ICRC was one of the few international organisations to keep international staff in Iraq (news - web sites) during the conflict.