BEIRUT — Cut off for three weeks by a regime siege, doctors in the Syrian town of Qusair are treating hundreds of wounded in battle-damaged homes and underground shop storerooms, short on antibiotics and anesthesia and using unsterilized cloth for bandages and hand pumps instead of oxygen canisters.
Amid relentless shelling, there are some 1,000 wounded, at least 300 of them seriously and in need of immediate evacuation, one doctor coordinating medical efforts in the town said Monday. But so far, the forces of President Bashar Assad’s regime backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group are barring any exit as they try to crush rebels and retake the town.
Kasem Alzein, the doctor who oversees a team of 80 medical staffers including 13 doctors in several makeshift hospitals in Qusair, said the priority was to evacuate some 300 seriously wounded civilians from the town. He said as many as 20 died in the last five days because of lack of medical attention.
“The humanitarian and medical conditions are terrible,” Alzein said, adding that no medical supplies have reached the town since the government launched its offensive. “We are treating people in homes in an unsterilized environment. We tried to evacuate the wounded and we can’t. No one is helping us.”
With the Syrian civil war well in its third year, Qusair, about 9 miles from the Lebanese border, has become the latest urban battleground in the grueling fight between Assad’s military and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime. The heaviness of the battle reflects the strategic importance of the town, located on supply routes that are vital for both sides.
An activist in the shattered town acknowledged Monday that regime forces have tightened their grip in recent days. But they said new reinforcements of hundreds of rebel fighters have managed to infiltrate the siege, in what is likely to prolong the fighting in this town, once home to 40,000 people.
“It is a stifling siege,” activist Rifaei Tammas said from inside Qusair, adding that most people now survive on one meal a day of grains, bread and olives.
