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‘Get me a stretcher, he needs help’

Scenes from hospitals in Dhaka
MASHFIQ MIZAN
The air inside the capital’s hospitals was filled with cries for help and painful screams. Injured protesters were seen groaning while their friends and relatives screamed for trolleys, stretchers and wheelchairs to carry them inside.
One after another, injured students flooded into Uttara Adhunik Hospital, their bodies pierced by shotgun pellets.
Visiting the hospital, this newspaper found emergency camps set up in front of the gate, with stretchers, trollies, and wheelchairs.
Friends carried their injured fellows into the hospital, with vans, auto-rickshaws and CNGs.
Those with comparatively less severe injuries were treated in front of the camps, while those with serious injuries were taken inside. The hospital authorities took an “all hands on deck” approach as day-offs of all the doctors and staffers were cancelled.
The interns and medical students nearby chipped in.
It resembled hospitals inside a war zone.
At least eight students were killed as police fired shotgun pellets and lobbed tear-shells at protesting students in Uttara’s Azampur area, confirmed Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Kuwait Moitree Friendship Hospital.
Meanwhile, over 1,000 students, mostly between 16-28 years old, sought treatment at Uttara Adhunik Hospital, said inside sources.
Many are in critical conditions, they added.
Inside, this correspondent found the usually sterile floors of the facility to be bloodied. There were not enough beds to treat all the patients.
Many were receiving treatment in the floor. Some parents were seen crying beside their injured sons, who were screaming in pain from the injuries.
Even the doctors struggled to fight back tears.
“I haven’t seen such a horrific situation in 12 years of my professional life,” said a nurse, requesting anonymity.
“Hundreds of protesting students with shotgun pellet wounds have streamed in since this afternoon. There aren’t enough beds to accommodate them all. Even the doctors and nurses are in tears,” she added.
The situation was worse in Kuwait Moitree Hospital, as seen by our reporter there.
Eight died inside the facility, all of whom had shotgun pellet wounds. The parents and friends of the deceased were in no condition to talk with this correspondent.
This newspaper could not contact our correspondents stationed in other hospitals of Uttara due to internet shutdown and disruptions in mobile network.
Similar situations existed in hospitals near Mohammadpur and Dhanmondi as police fired shotgun pellets on protesters, mostly college students.
A 17-year-old named Farhan Faiyaaz died in City Hospital, Mohammadpur.
At least 200-250 injured were brought to the facility,
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