Five Survivors Find Themselves Trapped in Middle of Iran-Iraq Propaganda War

Hands shielding swollen eyes from the glare of television lights, the three little girls squirmed uncomfortably in the hospital room as they were displayed as survivors of a poison gas attack.

The girls are among five victims being treated in the United States for chemical burns to the lung, eyes and skin.

Iran says they are survivors of a March 16 chemical attack by Iraq on the Iranian-occupied Kurdish village of Halabja. The Persian Gulf enemies have been at war for more than seven years.

The Tehran government says Iraq bombed its own citizens with chemical weapons--killing and wounding thousands--after members of the restive Kurdish minority welcomed invading Iranian troops to Halabja.

The United Nations, which earlier confirmed several Iraqi attacks with outlawed mustard gas and nerve gas during the war, has sent a team to investigate the Halabja attack.

Four of the victims met reporters earlier this month in an event organized by the Iranian mission to the United Nations, the arena for a bitter propaganda war between Iran and Iraq. One patient, Nazanin Hassan, 30, was not present because she is in the intensive care unit.

Mohammed Azizi, a 25-year-old university student, said Iraqi forces attacked the village several times in response to Kurdish unrest. But Azizi said even from the shelter of his basement, he knew that the March 16 attack was different.

“We smelled the gas,” he explained through an interpreter. “We knew it was not the (ordinary) kind of bomb.” he said.

Azizi said from his hospital bed that when he ventured outside hours later, he saw streets strewn with the victims of what doctors in the United States suspect was mustard gas, a World War I weapon outlawed worldwide since 1925.

“Any door you opened there were children, men and women, dying, dead,” Azizi said, his words punctuated by rough coughs. “I saw a lot of people in cars. As many as 10, 11, 12 in a car. They were dying.”

He said he and other stunned survivors began streaming out of Halabja. But once outside, he was soon sickened by the gas.

“My eyes felt heavy. It was hard to breathe. Eight or nine times I threw up. I smelled gas,” he recounted.

Doctors at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, in New York City’s borough of Queens, said all five of those brought to New York suffered lung and eye damage and from burns.

One child is also showing signs of bone marrow damage, said Dr. Deborah Lief-Dienstag, head of the pediatrics department.

She said the long-term prognosis for a gassing victim is unclear.

“I can tell you what a gunshot wound is. I can tell you what’s going to happen to the patient,” she said.

“But I don’t know what’s going to happen to these children. I don’t know what’s going to happen to their lungs in six months and I don’t think anyone else does either, including all the experts we’ve spoken to.”

Lief-Dienstag’s young patients were clearly uneasy when Iranian officials escorted journalists to their room. Several doctors expressed concern about infection.

One doctor, speaking on condition he not be identified, said emphatically that the news media visit “wasn’t our idea.”

Iran transferred small contingents of survivors from hospitals in Tehran to hospitals in major European cities and to St. John’s.

Amir Zamani, a first secretary at the Iranian mission, said Iran sent about 100 victims to hospitals abroad because Iran’s hospitals ran out of room.

Dr. Meyd Atabaki, an Iranian who is an attending physician at St. John’s, said all five brought to New York had to be sedated at first before they could be treated.

Hospital officials say psychiatrists are following the progress of all five patients, particularly the children, who were orphaned by the attack.