Rescue call over injured trapped on Syria border

Kasem Alzein, who coordinates treatment in several makeshift hospitals in the town of Qusair, said the wounded are being treated in private homes.

He said the town’s main hospital was destroyed during nearly three weeks of fighting between the Hezbollah-backed Syrian army and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Dr Alzein pleaded for help,
saying previous evacuation efforts by local medical teams had failed after a convoy was attack-
ed last week, killing 13 of the
injured.

The doctor said medical supplies are running out and medics treating the wounded most urgently need oxygen to keep the 300 people – mostly women, children and elderly - alive.

“The humanitarian and medical conditions are terrible,” the doctor said, adding that no medical supplies have reached the town since the government launched an offensive on Qusair on May
19.

“We are treating people in homes in an unsterilised environment.

“We tried to evacuate the wounded and we can’t. No one is helping us.”

Dr Alzein said 50 abandoned homes around Qusair have been turned into makeshift hospitals. Four of the homes have been converted into operating theatres.

He said the doctors had stocked up on medical supplies but are running out of antibiotics, bandages and anaesthetics, adding that oxygen supplies are already exhausted.

Appeals by the United Nations and other aid organisations to allow humanitarian workers to enter Qusair have gone unheeded by authorities in Damascus as fighting drags on and neither side has been able to deliver a decisive blow.

On Sunday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem to express concern over the situation in Qusair, according to Syria’s state-run news agency SANA.