MORE than 100 criminally psychotic patients are roaming Baghdad after looters ransacked the city’s only mental hospital, stealing even the metal doors from patients’ barred cells in the high- security unit.

One nurse told how she had found two patients whimpering in the grounds after being raped by marauders who stripped the hospital of beds, equipment and medicines. Four other women were raped after joining the hundreds of patients who either escaped or were released from al-Rashad mental teaching hospital by staff unable to treat them in a building devoid of “everything except the ceilings and walls”.

With overstretched American units able to offer only daytime patrols at the hospital, two rival Shia leaders have posted gunmen to provide security and to exert their own control over the premises.

Walking around the high-walled unit for 110 patients deemed criminally psychotic — including rapists, murderers, sex criminals and those deemed to have “antisocial” or “anti-governmental” delusions — Amir Abu Heelo, the hospital’s director, pointed to empty rooms. “The looters took away all the doors and the patients went,” Dr Heelo said. “We don’t know where they are now. They are a danger to themselves and the community.”

At the Zainab women’s ward, Leyla Dili Khadoum, a head nurse, was one of only a few staff who stayed behind with one male psychiatrist to look after the patients during the worst hours on April 8 and 9. “I wore a patient’s dress because I was afraid the looters would attack me,” she said. “Many of the other nurses wanted to stay but they are young and virgins and they were afraid. Those of us who are married are stronger.” She explained how the attacks had begun even while an American tank was outside the building during a battle with Iraqi forces, and how they had intensified after 7pm when it left.

Just after midnight she, two nurses and the psychiatrist went to find the women patients. All seemed to be in the hospital and unhurt, until she reached the last ward. There she found a 21-year-old woman patient, who has barely spoken since her father died seven years ago. “She was sitting in a corner hugging herself. Her dress was torn and covered in blood and she cried: “Where were you, Sister Leyla, they f*****d me.” She couldn’t say anything else.”

With tears in her eyes Sister Leyla said that she regretted the passing of Saddam Hussein’s regime, because nothing similar could have happened under it. “I had to stay with these patients, I spent seven years with them and they are just like my sisters and daughters,” she said.

In the one remaining men’s ward, a handful of staff have remained without pay for two months to look after their unmedicated charges. One patient, Hagob Ouzanian, a US-educated graduate in industrial draughtsmanship, describes how the looters arrived with guns and knives, smashed the electrical switches to steal the air conditioners and told patients: “The system is gone now, you are free to go.”

A depressive who was institutionalised eight years ago, he declined, but only 300 of the hospital’s more than 1,000 patients remain.

Relatives of released patients plead with medical staff to take them back. Pointing to his schizophrenic brother, Haider, 38, Kareem Hamza Hamoodi said: “He has tried to burn down our house four times since he came home. We can’t control him.” The doctors refused to take him back, saying that Haider would escape.

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