UN pledges to assist spinal injury hospital following blast

A spinal injury hospital opposite the United Nations headquarters that was wrecked by a car bomb nearly two weeks ago, will be brought back into operation with United Nations assistance, IRIN learnt on Sunday. The hospital was also badly damaged in the explosion that killed 23 people, including UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, and injured more than 80. At least 10 people at the hospital were injured in the truck bomb blast, according to Veronique Taveau, a United Nations spokeswoman in Iraq. At the hospital, the long single-storey building facing the blast site has been virtually destroyed, with pieces of roof hanging into rooms filled with chunks of concrete and metal. Luckily the destroyed rooms appear to have been used mostly for storage – patients were kept in rooms farther away, Ibrahim Abdullah, the hospital pharmacist, told IRIN. "It’s a miracle none of us was killed," said Abdullah, who was away from the hospital at the time of the blast. "I’m lucky to be alive." In all, about 150 people were at the hospital, including 80 patients and numerous attendants and family members, Abdullah added. Most of the patients are paralyzed and in wheelchairs. Soldiers from the Iran-Iraq war and civilians are treated at the hospital. "It’s another side of the bombing that everyone missed," said Robert Painter, the Baghdad area coordinator for humanitarian aid at the United Nations. The United Nations had made a commitment to rebuild the hospital as soon as possible, Taveau added. Money has already been pledged for the reconstruction. "It looks pretty bad, but we will take care of these people," Taveau said. In the confusion immediately following the blast, workers first said 12 people at the hospital had died. As United Nations workers dealt with the dead and wounded from their headquarters, spinal injury patients were being wheeled away from the site in the opposite direction. The spinal injury hospital is separated from the United Nations compound by a parking lot, a narrow road, and now by a double role of concertina wire. Hospital workers later revised their figures to 80 injured, after having found all of the patients alive in other hospitals around Baghdad. When acting United Nations special representative Ramiro Lopes da Silva visited the hospital, he was told 10 were injured, Taveau remarked. On Sunday, workers were going through the rubble searching for salvageable items, much like their United Nations counterparts on the other side of the barbed wire. They found a cache of medicines in the pharmacy that were largely undamaged, even though everything else was rubble. A group calling itself 'Mohammed’s Second Army' have claimed responsibility for the truck bomb attack. Investigators have gathered pieces remaining from the truck in order to obtain more information about the blast. Witnesses said the truck carried cement powder to be used in building a wall that was going up next to the building. Munitions from the former Iraqi Army, including a 500-pound bomb, were buried in the powder.