Report: Samarra suffering under curfew

Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division enter a house in Samarra in March.

SAMARRA, Iraq, May 18 (Reuters) - Abu Mahmoud says an 11-day curfew in the Iraqi city of Samarra has pushed his family's survival skills to the limit as supplies of food, medicine and fuel dwindle alarmingly.

"There is no electricity, no water, no schools and no hospitals. Samarra has turned into a city for the dead," the 65-year-old father of three said.

Since U.S. and Iraqi forces imposed a curfew and sealed off the city following a suicide bomb attack that killed 12 police officers on May 6, residents are struggling to find basic goods...

Some shops have closed, a doctor in the main hospital said patients were dying because of a lack of fuel for generators and people were using wooden boats in the Tigris river to ferry foodstuff and the wounded to a nearby town.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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