Children caught in middle during wars

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By CARLA K. JOHNSON
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080204/ap_on_he_me/iraq_injured_children

CHICAGO - U.S. military hospitals treated a significant number of wounded and sick children in the early years of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new study finds, and military doctors say children keep arriving at their hospitals today.

With no true front line or battle zone, the war makes children especially vulnerable to stray bullets and other combat hazards, one study author said. And with Iraq's own medical system collapsing, families seek out the U.S. military to help their children with more conventional ailments.

"I took care of children burned from a kerosene heater, regular car accidents, other injuries secondary to the conflict itself," said study co-author Dr. Philip Spinella, who served as an Army doctor in Baghdad in 2004 and 2005.

Military doctors routinely treat children wounded by rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs, said Spinella, who now works at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.