Free Republic

On Thursday when I was at the hospital one of the patients that I worked with was a young Iraqi boy. He had been shot through the leg, just below the knee. After a week of unsuccessful attempts to save his leg, they amputated about 4 inches below the knee. Four days later and still fighting an infection, they took some more, leaving him with a stump about four inches above the knee. I guessed that he was 7 or 8, he was smaller than Jack, but he looked and acted mature. Anyhow, when the surgeon was showing him how...

Iraqi Boy Helps Lead Troops to Roadside Bomb Mosul, Iraq -- Multi-National Forces from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), were able to defuse a roadside bomb after an Iraqi boy provided them with information about it in northern Iraq on Jan. 10. Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, were on patrol in Mosul when an Iraqi child informed them of a roadside bomb in the area. The tip led to the diffusion and destruction of the bomb. No injuries were reported, and the child was compensated for his service. Release #050112r

An Iraqi boy who was orphaned and lost his arms in a US bombing raid early in the Iraq war has thanked Kuwait's prime minister for his health care and expressed hopes for his future ahead of a trip to England, where he will be fitted with artificial limbs and meet some of his extended family. "I want to be able to drive a car, God willing," Ali Abbas said shyly after meeting with Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah to thank him for his treatment and that of other injured Iraqis at the Kuwaiti government's expense. Ali, 13, and...

MAHAWEEL, Iraq — Over a month's span 12 years ago, Iraqi soldiers loyal to Saddam Hussein took busloads of men, women and children — blindfolded and bound — down a dusty road outside the small town of Mahaweel. The soldiers pushed the people, possibly more than 3,000 of them, into trenches. They shot them and shoved dirt over their bodies. But one, a 12-year-old boy named Nasser, survived. The bullets missed him — twice — and he managed to crawl to a shallow end of the mass grave, where he bit through the rags that bound him. Yesterday, this apparent...

Appeals have been launched in response to public demand to help an Iraqi boy who lost both arms in a missile blast. Newspapers and a charity reported hundreds of emotional messages from the public after a picture of Ali Ismail Abbas was published. The 12-year-old lost both arms and was badly burned when a missile destroyed his family's shack, killing his parents and eight relatives. He is being treated in north Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital, which is under severe pressure from casualties and only has access to rudimentary medicines. Doctors believe that time could be running out for the youngster, whose...