Doctors forbid evacuating wounded Russian from Iraq

A severely wounded employee of Russia's Interenergoservis company will not be evacuated from Iraq, RIA Novosti learned from Viktor Beltsov, representative of the Russian Emergencies Ministry's information department, on Friday.

"Taking into account his extremely grave condition doctors decided not to evacuate Anatoly Korenkov," he explained.

Thus, only 46 people will be evacuated from the country. Doctors of the Sklifosovsky First Aid Institution will not leave for Baghdad.

Instead, "Interenergoservis' employees will be accompanied by a group of doctors from the Emergencies Ministry's rescue center," Beltsov pointed out.

The ministry's plane left for Baghdad on Friday from Ramenskoye airport, the Moscow region.

It is expected to return to Moscow on Friday evening.

Earlier the department reported that the plane would carry an operative group of the ministry's employees and a reanimobile of its central air rescue team, equipped with everything necessary to provide assistance to the wounded. It allows fully maintaining a person's vital functions.

The first group of Russian workers was evacuated from Iraq last week after a bus with the company's employees had been attacked by unknown individuals in Baghdad. Two Russians were killed and five wounded in the firing.

The condition of two of the wounded was assessed as grave. One of them, Vladimir Trifonov was taken to Moscow last week.

Interenergoservis works in Iraq under four contracts. On January 20, March 7 and March 10, 2004, it signed contracts for carrying out repairs at the Dora, South Baghdad and Al Mussaib thermal power plants. On March 7th it signed a contract with Iraq's provisional administration for supply of electronic units to the Nassiria thermal power plant. The cost of the contracts realized by the company is estimated at about $30 million.