Meanwhile, Back in Iraq...

Photo: Reuters

This week news from Iraq had a harder time getting space: even the vanguard McClatchy News dropped Iraq from its homepage navigation spot, at least for the next few weeks (Mark Seibel of McClatchy assured me, when I queried, that it will be returning to the homepage soon. Until then, you can reach the McClatchy Iraq Bureau here).

So what news might you have missed? Bombings have increased since Ramadan began; evening assaults hit civilians out grocery shopping. 12 people were killed by one Baghdad bomb today (Sunday) and 35 injured. UPDATE: 2 more bombings later this evening killed 19 and injured 70 per BBC.

Cholera is on the rise; note that Gorillas Guides editor says the IRIN figure is out of date. Even so, IRIN indicates at least 150 new cases this week.

Can't have clean water without electricity. Arkan Hamed and Dahr Jamail start their latest article with the news that only one of Baghdad Medical City's ten elevators works. (Have you been in a hospital lately? Picture the wheel chairs, the gurneys, the elderly...). But that news pales when we read that it is not safe to drink the hospital's tap water, and that "sometimes doctors cannot find water even to wash their hands. Equipment is often not sterilised." Worse still:

"Most of the medicines we have here are out of date, and we lack almost all basic antibiotics," says Dr. Saad Abu Al-Noor, a pharmacist at the supply warehouse at Baghdad Medical City. "We cannot get medicines from the stores because of lack of security, and because there is just too much corruption all over."
Patients in need or their family members are sent out to the shops to buy catheters, disposable syringes and essential medicines, Dr. Noor said. "If the patient is lucky, he can find the items on the black market. And then the question is if they can afford these things. The price is ten to 20 times higher than it should be."

Sunshine, a teenager blogger in Mosul, records her thoughts about the Ramadan bombings, life without electricity and the rise in kidnappings in a new entry this week. Her cheery news: she's finished her book and has an agent. Here's hoping this strong young voice finds a publisher.

In sports, Rasool Khadim took the silver medal at the Beijing Paralympics for weight lifting, marking Iraq's first win there.