BBC News, World Edition
The appalling injuries suffered by Ali Ismail Abbas are not unique, says
an aid worker who has visited Mosul's hospitals.
The 12-year-old lost
both his arms and received extensive burns during a US bombing raid.
He has been airlifted
to a hospital in Kuwait for emergency surgery.
However, Brendan
Paddy of the aid charity Save the Children, who is working in the northern
Iraqi city of Mosul, says that he has seen dozens of similarly injured
children whose plight has not attracted similar attention.
Unfortunately Ali
is by no means unique He said that the injury toll was reducing experienced
medical staff to tears. He told the BBC: "In the hospitals the doctors
have struggled very bravely to keep things running during the bombing.
"They were having
to do amputations on children all the time.
"Every day they
are having to confront that kind of thing - they were broken up about it
when they were speaking to us. "These were medical professionals on
the verge of tears. Unfortunately Ali is by no means unique."
He said that staff
had been fighting off looters "with their bare hands".
"The looting
and the burning have been pretty extensive so there have been problems
with water supply."
Save the Children
managed to provide money to one hospital so that staff could go out and
buy fresh vegetables - patients had been living on nothing but rice for
weeks.
However, he said
that the situation in the city remained dangerous for aid workers.
"We're putting
potentially ourselves at risk if we go in."
Save the Children
has been based in northern Iraq for 12 years and has 60 Kurdish staff who
have worked on throughout the conflict.
CHECK
THE IRAQI BODY COUNT DATABASE