ABC's Iraqi Journalists Covered Health Care Before Baghdad Ambush

May 18, 2007 — -- ABC News' Iraqi broadcast journalists, cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, were returning home from work at the ABC News Baghdad bureau Thursday afternoon when their car was reportedly ambushed and they were killed by unknown assailants.

One of the last stories they covered was a piece with correspondent Terry McCarthy to detail the disparity in medical treatment between wounded Americans in the war zone and wounded Iraqis. The following is what they reported on "World News."

Saif Talib was shot in both legs while on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol last June in Baghdad. After he was injured, a helicopter took him to a U.S. military hospital where they had to amputate both of his legs.

"I am so happy," said Talib, "because without the Americans, I would have been taken to an Iraqi hospital and I would be dead by now."

The Americans saved his life that night, but to get artificial limbs from the Iraqi medical service took months. There are 20,000 amputees in Iraq and the main prosthetic clinic in Baghdad can only make six new limbs a week, as there are not enough funds, according to Col. Bassim al Kwanchi, who is in charge of the Iraqi military prosthetics program.

"It's expensive, but it's very important for the patient, you know," Kwanchi said.

'He Was Bleeding All Night'

Roughly 45,000 Iraqi security force members have been injured since the war began in 2003, and unless they are with U.S. troops, they have to be treated locally. Iraqi hospitals were once some of the best in the Middle East — now they are terribly short of skilled doctors and modern equipment.

Baghdad's neurosurgery hospital gets about 120 traumatic brain injuries a month and struggles to treat them.

Sayyed Bassim, a security guard at the interior ministry, was shot in the head and taken to the local clinic where, his family said, there was not enough care.

"There were no specialists," said his father Sayyed Mohammed Sayyed Muttar al Ba'aj. "He was bleeding all night."

Bassim was transferred to the neurosurgery hospital the next day where he finally received surgery. Now this father of five can barely speak. When ABC News visited, he managed to get out only two words in Arabic.

He said: "I afraid."