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KOBANI,
Syria -- Like much of this battered Syrian Kurdish border town on the
front lines in the battle against the Islamic State group, most of its
hospitals and clinics now lie in ruins. Only one is still working - but
its location is kept secret for fear it could be targeted by the
militants.
Inside the tiny field clinic, saving
lives and dealing with horrifying wounds of war comes first, and
concerns such as keeping operating rooms sterile and cleaning up after
surgery are on the back burner.
Blood is
splattered across most of the beds and floors, and a small team of only
three doctors and five nurses are providing the only remaining medical
services in the town. They are sometimes forced to operate by torchlight
since power generators regularly fail.
They
treat a seemingly unending flood of wounded Kurdish fighters and members
of the Free Syrian Army, just meters (yards) away from the front lines.
The
Spartan clinic only has the very basic equipment and regularly runs out
of supplies. Those with more critical wounds must make a mad dash for
the border with Turkey, and wait there for a transport to a better
hospital in the neighboring country.
But losing precious time in the perilous journey often diminishes their chances for survival.
"If
we had a mobile operating unit, we wouldn't have to leave our wounded
at the Turkish border to wait for six or 10 hours where they sometimes
die," said Mohammed Aref, a doctor at the Kobani clinic.
An
exclusive report shot by videojournalist Jake Simkin inside Kobani late
last month offered a rare, in-depth glimpse of the destruction that
more than two months of fighting has inflicted on the Kurdish town in
northern Syria by the Turkish border.
The
Kurdish fighters of Kobani, backed by a small number of Iraqi peshmerga
forces and Syrian rebels, are locked in what they say is a fight to the
end against the Islamic State group, which swept into the town in
mid-September. The militants' advance was part of a summer blitz after
the Islamic State group overran large parts of Syria and neighboring
Iraq.
Kobani, which once had a population of
about 50,000, has seen some of the fiercest urban warfare in Syria's
civil war, now in its fourth year, and has paid a heavy price for
battling the Islamic State extremists.
Aref and
the others at the Kobani clinic say the immobility of their facility
slows them down, since they cannot venture far outside and treat the
wounded at the scene - as paramedics and mobile doctors elsewhere do in
combat situations.
Still, Aref is dedicated to
saving Kobani's wounded as best he can and dreams of someday rebuilding
the town clinics and working in a safe operating theater.
Helped
by more than 270 airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition and an American
airdrop of weapons, the fighters in Kobani have succeeded in halting the
militants' advance and believe that a corner has been turned.
But the fight against the Islamic State is not slowing down.
"We
know that the number (of wounded) will increase and more injured will
come so we have to be ready," said Aref. "The most important thing for
us is having an operating room."
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