BAGHDAD, Feb 18 (AFP) - Iraqi emergency services struggled amid chaos on Friday as dozens of bleeding and lacerated bodies were brought to Baghdad's Yarmuk hospital after suicide attacks on Shiite mosques.
And in the chaos and bloodshed which seems endemic to the Middle East, hysterical relatives pushed and shoved to be with or find their loved ones.
Scores of young Shiite men dressed in traditional black during the mourning period of Ashura offered their blood for transfusion, crowding the hospital entrance where police, fearful of another suicide bomber, also tried to search those wanting to enter the building.
Ashura is the most important Shiite festival, commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala in 680 AD, which reaches its climax on Saturday. At the last Ashura commemoration more than 170 people were killed.
Within about an hour, in two attacks on Shiite mosques in the Iraqi capital, suicide bombers had killed at least 20 people. With another blast at a cafe in a predominantly Shiite district, a total of at least 23 people died and more than 40 were wounded.
Waves of people, grief-stricken or bleeding, descended on this 1960s concrete medical complex, one of the biggest in the capital and the prime destination for vicitims of almost daily bombings because of its central location.
Medical staff, despite the grim regularity of an influx of twisted or shattered bodies and distraught relatives, are still almost helpless to control the situation.
The Sunni-led insurgency has killed thousands of Shiites since the toppling by US-led forces of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni regime in April 2003.
On Friday, women beat themselves on chests or thighs, lamenting the loss or injury of their menfolk -- sons, husbands, brothers and fathers. Crowds of mourning men are no less hysterical, weeping openly in the sterile light-blue corridors.
Sheikhs from the stricken mosques take control and order their faithful out of the emergency room so that the physicians get do their job.
Outside the hospital morgue, the deaths bring devastation to waiting or searching relatives.
"We have lost those who ensured our future," cries a shabbily dressed man, shaking and hitting his thighs in grief.
"I will destroy Al-Rahman mosque," he shouts, referring to one of Baghdad's Sunni mosques.
Sporadic gunfire echoes around neighbouring streets as police fire in the air to disperse young men struggling to get to the hospital and discover the fate of friends and loved ones.
A police officer warns journalists not to go inside. He says distraught relatives overcome with anger might lash out at foreigners associated with the mayhem of the post-Saddam era.
"I suggest you stay outside," says Captain Tariq Raheem. "Once you get inside the hospital, no one will be able to ensure your safety."
02/18/2005 15:45 GMT - AFP