As Antakya conflicts to deal with increasing numbers of injured Syrians pouring into the city on a regular basis, and with facilities such as hospitals already overstretched, arrogates of mistreatment of the wounded at Antakya State Hospital have added a new dimension to troubles confronted by the region, endangering to fuel sectarian tensions in the city siting on the same sectarian fault lines as Syria, having both a Sunni and a Nusayri (Arab Alawi) population.
All the same, a chief official from the hospital has powerfully refused these arrogates.
The issue is so sensitive that it is stoking awes of a spillover of the Syrian crisis — which is hurtling ever deeper into all-out civilian and sectarian strife — into the southern province of Hatay and its provincial capital of Antakya, home to thousands of Syrians, preponderantly Sunni.
Antakya, a cosmopolitan city of multiple religions, lets in a significant Arab Alawite population, the sect of the Bashar al-Assad regime. It has been hit harder by the unfolding Syrian crisis than any other city in the region, with the exclusion of some Lebanese cities, due to the continual flow of refugees and the injured.
Mohammed, who was a reserve officer in the Syrian army before the arising and at present fights for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), was injured in a clash in the northern city of Aleppo — a commercial hub and the biggest city in Syria — a few days ago. He was taken by his friends to Antakya, to get medical treatment.
