Even the doctors cry for wounded

UNDER different circumstances, 20-month-old Azamat Mukagov would be the envy of his siblings, lying in a bed strewn with toys: a soft pink seal, a red sports car, a rattle.

But his bed is in a Moscow hospital to which some of the most severely wounded children from the school hostage crisis in southern Russia have been airlifted.

He cannot play with the toys because his hands, stained orange with iodine, are tied to the bed rails to stop him from touching his wounds.

A 12-year-old named Alan who has burns to 60% of his body recently regained consciousness.

"I spoke to him just now," said Dr Maria Svetosmova, one of a team of five psychologists drafted into the hospital to counsel the children and their parents.

"The first thing he did when they took the bandages off was to ask for his mother. They have a culture in the Caucasus that says that a man must not cry. So he holds it in."

At times on the verge of tears, she said the work was like nothing she had experienced before.

"I can't even draw a parallel. Imagine," she said referring to Azamat Mukagov, "he doesn't say anything, just lies there patting his toy over and over with tears streaming down his face.

"They have experienced a shock that not every adult could handle," she added.

In a bed nearby, 10-year-old Azamat Tetov's mother, Zalina, leans close to her son's face. Her voice is calm, barely audible and she speaks to him constantly, her big black eyes fixed on his. Azamat's occasional answers are inaudible through a plastic oxygen mask that covers his mouth and nose.

Six days after the school seizure ended in intense fighting and more than 300 deaths that appalled the nation, a steady stream of Muscovites brought plastic bags overflowing with toys, clothes, games and money to Children's Hospital No 9 where eight victims were receiving treatment for burns and gunshot wounds.

"We imagined ourselves in their position," said Alyosha, a bright-eyed 12-year-old struggling outside the ward doors with three bursting bags in each hand. "We would have been upset if no one had brought us anything."

Alyosha, assisted by his mother, was bringing gifts from his school class.

Another woman in an elegant grey overcoat placed still more bags at the feet of four relatives waiting on a bench by the ward's swing doors. Trying to explain their contents to four relatives on a bench, she began weeping to the distress of the waiting women.

"Shhh, it's OK, it's OK," one said.