Hospital struggles with Mosul’s injured _ and its dead

A medical technician stands next to a dead body outside the refrigerator unit in Qayara hospital 35 miles south of Mosul. The hospital receives so many corpses from Mosul, where fighting continues between Iraqi forces
and Islamic State militants, that sometimes they do not fit in the morgue and are left in the corridors. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov) — A medical technician stands next to a dead body outside the refrigerator unit in Qayara hospital 35 miles south of Mosul. The hospital receives so many corpses from Mosul, where fighting continues between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, that sometimes they do not fit in the morgue and are left in the corridors. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov) A medical technician stands next to a dead body outside the refrigerator unit in Qayara hospital 35 miles south of Mosul. The hospital receives so many corpses from Mosul, where fighting continues between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, that sometimes they do not fit in the morgue and are left in the corridors. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

By Associated Press April 1, 2017 4 min read

QAYARA, Iraq (AP) – The hospital in Qayara sometimes receives so many dead bodies that they do not fit in the refrigerator unit and have to be left in the corridors. Inside the mortuary, the dead are simply put on the floor because there are no containers, sometimes piled one on top of the other in a gruesome fashion and wrapped in a blanket, just as they were brought in.

The bodies are casualties from Mosul, where Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition forces have been battling the Islamic State group for over five months to take control of the city.

“We asked for shelves but they gave us nothing,” shrugged Dr. Mansour Marouf, the hospital’s chief surgeon.

The beleaguered Qayara hospital is one of only two public hospitals within a 120-mile (193-kilometer) radius, between Mosul and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. It is overwhelmed with casualties from the field clinics in Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been battling Islamic State group militants for over five months. Activity in the hospitals mirrors the intensity of the operation: 21 dead on Friday, nothing on Saturday.

Since it reopened in January, after Qayara had been retaken by Iraqi troops from IS, it has treated over 2,000 patients, including some 600 battle casualties.