BRUSHING away the flies that kept settling on the child’s face, Murtudhr Kadhum said: “In Basra we feared the war, but in fact it is the peace that is killing us.”

The 11-month-old girl he was treating at Basra’s ageing Republic Hospital was grievously ill from drinking the filthy water that her mother had collected from a nearby river. Sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed yesterday, Sabbiha Hadi rocked back and forth, telling the doctor over and over again that she had not meant to hurt her child, but she had been unable to find any other source of water.

Last night four children in this city centre hospital died as a consequence of having no clean water. Dr Kadhum feared that Tuka Hadi would be the fifth and that many would follow her.

“When people in Britain see pictures like this, they must think us uneducated savages who don’t know how to care for our people,” he said. “They should know we are good doctors — but without the help the British promised us with water, electricity and basic medicines, how can we save children like this?”

International sympathy has focused, understandably, on those images of infants maimed by war, with airlifts being organised and funds raised abroad. Dr Kadhum believes, however, that there is a real danger that more Iraqi children will die of preventable diseases in the next few weeks and the outside world will not notice.

“During the war we knew what we faced and took precautions,” he said, “but now there is peace, we are seeing more and more children being brought in here than during the bombardment.

“We keep asking the British Army for water. Please, just give us some clean water, but still families have go to the rivers and drains. It isn’t right.”

This hospital survived the war and the looters, but now it is struggling to stay open. The small generator that the staff have to keep the accident and emergency department functioning is desperately short of fuel. There is no oxygen left, hardly any anaesthetic, nor clean syringes.

Five women lying side by side have had to share the same needle. Doctors were operating on a patient on Monday night when the power failed and the man died.

Dr Kadhum said: “We know from listening to the radio that in Britain there are speeches from Tony Blair and others saying how much help is getting to the Iraqi people. It is not. I’m afraid that is just propaganda to make Washington and London feel good about what they are doing.”

This was not some Saddam Hussein loyalist trying to score political points. He said that he despised politics, and where it has led his country.

He described what he called “a shameful episode” when he first asked British commanders for an urgent delivery of water. “A tanker rolled up, followed by a lot of television cameras and several senior officers. We didn’t mind that, but that was the last lot of water we saw for days, so it was just showbusiness.”

There were dark lines under his eyes from lack of sleep and, like the rest of the staff, he had not been paid for more than two months, even though his salary is only 60p a week.

“We don’t care about that,” he said. “What hurts is not being able to do our jobs properly.”

The hospital mortuary is full of those who died during the week-long bombardment. Dr Kadhum fears that they could be outnumbered soon by those “killed by the peace”.

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