US must send medical aid to Libya: Senator McCain

Editor’s Note: NATO originally called their bombardment of Libya a “humanitarian intervention”, and now they admit their actions have indeed caused a “humanitarian crisis” — which they want paid for by the American taxpayer as well.

US Republican Senator John McCain (C)
speaks during a press conference held
in the Libyan capital Tripoli
© AFP/File Mahmud Turkia

AFP

WASHINGTON, Libya (AFP) – Senator John McCain called Sunday for urgent US medical aid to help thousands wounded in Libya, amid a growing humanitarian crisis as revolutionary forces battle the final vestiges of the Moamer Kadhafi regime.

“They’ve got thousands and thousands of wounded. They say that they’ve lost 25,000 people killed, 3,000 have been maimed, 60,000 injured. That’s their government figures,” McCain told CBS television’s “Face the Nation” program.

“We should be helping them,” said the influential US lawmaker, a Vietnam War aviator and prominent voice on US military matters who also was the Republican Party’s losing 2008 presidential candidate.

The senator made his remarks as civilians fled Kadhafi’s besieged hometown of Sirte, where the international Red Cross warned of an impending medical emergency as the battle for the fugitive strongman’s bastion raged.

McCain, who recently returned from a visit to the embattled country, said aid workers on the ground in Libya were ill-equipped to cope with the gathering crisis.

“I think we could do enormous things by helping them with the casualties that they’ve experienced which have been horrendous,” he told CBS.

McCain said his travels took him and two other lawmakers to a hospital in Tripoli among other sites.

“They don’t have the medical expertise and talent to take care of these people. There are amputees there,” the Arizona lawmaker said.

Revolutionary troops have met stiff resistance from in Sirte, where NATO aircraft have been conducting bombing raids.

Red Cross workers, who delivered desperately-needed supplies to medics in the besieged coastal city on Saturday, said the hospital had come under rocket fire as new regime forces stepped up their assault on Kadhafi diehards.

Meanwhile, an AFP reporter at a mosque field hospital west of the city said hundreds of Sirte residents were fleeing in packed vehicles, sitting on top of possessions piled high in the rear of pick-ups.

McCain said providing aid to the injured in the conflict was the least the US government should do, with Libya in the final throes of a months-long battle to end more than four decades of Kadhafi’s dictatorial rule.

He suggested some of the wounded could be sent to a US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany and that an American hospital ship should be sent to Tripoli, or if not Malta.

“We can help them. They don’t have the medical capability to care for all of these wounded. More are still coming in,” McCain told CBS.