Medics

From a lack of ambulance drivers to break-downs of the ambulances themselves, to checkpoints blocking routes to hospitals to a shortage of blood, the chaotic response to the deadliest truck bombing in Somalia’s history cost additional lives, medics said.

In the Armenian capital, Yerevan, armed men in a prolonged standoff with police took four medics hostage.

Last month, Dr. Saeed al-Samahiji, a Bahraini ophthalmologist, was arrested from his home to begin serving a one-year prison sentence after being convicted of “insulting the King of Bahrain” at a funeral last year. Dr. Al-Samahiji was among 20 medics in Bahrain that were convicted by a special military court on 29 September 29, 2011, for treating Bahraini citizens who had been attacked by security forces in the brutal government crackdown in response to peaceful protests in February of that year.