Iraq orphans found starved and naked

From correspondents in Baghdad
June 19, 2007 06:14pm

MORE than 20 boys have been found, starved and naked, at a government-run orphanage for special needs children in Iraq.

The scene at the Baghdad facility reduced some of the US and Iraqi soldiers who found the children to tears.

The 24 boys were found naked and lying on concrete floors, covered in their own excrement, flies and sores. Some were near death.

(Neurotic Iraqi Wife has written quite the scathing condemnation of the state of the orphanage and the plight of the children. I borrowed the pics she got on her website.

She writes from the Green Zone, but that should not take away from her fiery whipping of affairs in Iraq. She has become a very merciless socio-political commentator.

So, I ask myself, with Layla Anwar, Riverbend, Fayrouz, Baghdad Dweller, Star of Mosul, Talking about Iraq, and other patriotic Iraqi women running loose, should we - Iraqi men - leave them to run our affairs? I am beginning to believe they are far wiser and far more humanitarian than us.)

"I saw children that you could see literally every bone in their body that were so skinny, they had no energy to move whatsoever, no expression on their face," US army Staff Sergeant Michael Beale told CBS News of the find in the Iraqi capital last week.

Lieutenant Stephen Duperre said the scene was devastating.

"The kids were tied up, naked, covered in their own waste, faeces, and there were three people that were cooking themselves food, but nothing for the kids," he said.

Staff Sergeant Mitchell Gibson said soldiers originally thought the boys were dead when they happened, at random, to peak over a wall into the orphanage.

"They thought they were all dead, so they threw a basketball (to) try to get some attention, and actually one of the kids lifted up their head, tilted it over and just looked and then went back down," he told CBS.

The soldiers believed the boys had been held at the facility in appalling conditions for more than a month.

That was despite the fact that the orphanage was staffed, and well-stocked with food and even brand new clothes for the children.

But it is alleged the caretaker of the facility - who is now on the run - was selling the supplies at a local market, and neglecting the most basic needs of the disabled boys he was responsible for.

Two security guards from the facility have been arrested on the orders of the Iraqi Government.

Two women who had worked there, and who posed for photos in front of the naked boys as if there was nothing wrong, had also disappeared, CBS reported.

The boys have since been transferred to another orphanage and the soldiers involved in their rescue had since been back to see them.

One boy who was so weak when he was found that he was not expected to live, was now able to sit up in his bed.

But as only one of the boys can talk, the full horror of their experience may never be known.

I have run out of comments. All I can say is welcome to liberation