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When policemen, soldiers
and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in
insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of
the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving
had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.
In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to
die because one of the doctors at the Republic
Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell.
Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of
them by secretly administering lethal injections, a
police inquiry has revealed.
"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had
failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would
finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah
Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The
Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a
medicine which increased their bleeding so they died
from loss of blood."
Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an
eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared
to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly
made himself available for work in any part of the
hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.
He was particularly willing to assist in the
emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and
civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent
attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed
off their feet and glad of any help they could get.
Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon
after being tended by their enthusiastic young
colleague.
Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader
of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin,
was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked
that a doctor and an educated men should do such a
thing," said Col Jaff.
The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic of the
ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of
Kirkuk. The dispute over its fate is the most
important reason why the political parties in
Baghdad have failed to create a new government three
months after the election on 15 December. The Kurds,
expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with Arab settlers
by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April
2003. They have no intention of giving it up. "We
will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar Ali Hamajan,
the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the
provincial council. "It is part of Kurdistan."
He recalls that when he was 18 months old, his
parents fled with him from his village north of
Kirkuk moments before the Iraqi army destroyed it.
But Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, has
frustrated Kurdish demands, enshrined in the new
constitution, for Kurds to be allowed to return to
Kirkuk and Arabs settlers to be removed to their
original homes. The Kurds expect a referendum in
Kirkuk that would lead to the province joining the
highly autonomous Kurdish region ruled by the
Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq.
For the 1.9 million Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs of
Kirkuk province, oil has brought few benefits. They
live on top of at least 10 billion barrels of oil
which was first exploited in 1927. Despite that,
people wanting to buy petrol in Kirkuk wait all day
in queues of battered vehicles. "It is the most
devastated city in all Iraq," said Mohammed Othman,
deputy head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the
most powerful Kurdish party in Kirkuk.
All Iraqi provinces were seriously damaged under
Saddam Hussein but few on the scale of Kirkuk.
Sinister mounds in the fields mark where Kurdish
villages once stood before they were destroyed.
Often the Iraqi army poured concrete into the
village wells to prevent people returning. Saddam
Hussein also bulldozed four districts in Kirkuk
after the failed Kurdish uprising in 1991. Between
then and 2003 at least 120,000 Kurds and Turkomens
were expelled, in addition to those forced out in
the previous 40 years.
Some Kurds have returned, but not to a land of
plenty. In the old sports stadium in Kirkuk,
hundreds of families are squatting amid the garbage
and sewage. The guerrilla war continues at a low but
persistent level and the Arabs are not going to
leave or be marginalised without a fight.
Smoke was rising over Kirkuk this week as children
set ablaze tyres to celebrate the Nowruz, the
Kurdish spring festival.
Kirkuk is not a place where many people would like
to live - but the battle to control it may yet
destroy Iraq.
www.independent.co.uk
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