Hospitals full as siege tightens

TALAS — The hospitals of Talas are full. Five weeks after the Popular Front of Irad began its investment of the city on 22 April, doctors at St. Luka Hospital and the Talas Regional Hospital Medical Complex said yesterday that they had no free beds and were treating patients in corridors.

St. Luka Hospital, run by the St. Luka Community Health Mission of the Syro-Iradi Church, has 120 beds. Staff said it was caring for well over that number, among them civilians wounded in the fighting on the city's edges, fighters of the Front, men of the National Guard units stationed in the city, and police. "We do not ask anyone which side they are on," said a sister of the Order of St. Janyl the Hermit who works on the surgical ward. "We ask where it hurts."

With the roads to the countryside cut, the hospitals depend on stocks of medicines that staff said would last days rather than weeks. Surgical dressings and anesthetics were the most urgent needs. Power cuts have forced the hospitals to run on generators for several hours each night, and fuel is scarce.

The mission appealed to all sides to allow medical supplies into the city and to respect the hospitals. The cabinet of Prime Minister Bakyt Orozbekov said it was doing everything possible to keep the hospitals supplied. The Front's commanders, who now hold most of the countryside around the city, could not be reached for comment.