By Ryan Dilley BBC News Online, Kuwait

After hours of plastic surgery, the 6-year-old boy can breath again

As the civilian cost of war in Iraq is counted, a handful of the children caught up in the conflict are being airlifted to Kuwait for medical treatment. The care they are receiving is light-years away for that available to those left behind.

The six-year-old Iraqi boy laying in an intensive care bed at Kuwait's Ibn Sina hospital is a symbol of the contradictions thrown up by the war in his native land. He is caught in the clash between humankind's finest and basest impulses.

Modern military technology smashed his face so badly he lost an eye and was having severe difficulties breathing for himself.

Modern medical science provided him with the ventilation equipment he needed to stay alive and the plastic surgery that is beginning to rebuild his shattered nose, mouth and jaw.

The child is the victim of a conflict fought by strangers not just perilously close to innocent non-combatants, but in their very midst. And yet the boy was urgently flown by helicopter to a hospital where strangers are working tirelessly to save his life.

Shelling leaves its marks

"The boy was in a critical condition when he arrived. His facial injuries were compromising his breathing," Dr Atef Foudeh, head of the intensive care at Ibn Sina, told BBC News Online. "He is now stable and about to undergo more plastic surgery."

Two other Iraqi boys have just been flown south to Kuwaiti hospitals for treatment well beyond what they could expect to receive in the woefully inadequate Iraqi hospitals or the field medical centres set up by the US-led forces.

We will welcome any case, not just children, that the Allies feel should be brought here Ahmad Al-Shatti

The elder, a 14-year-old, has lost one arm and one leg. His remaining leg is broken at the ankle. Mohammed Al-Farhan, 12, was also brought in on the military flight on Tuesday. He has extensive injuries from what doctors think may have been an artillery shell, perhaps targeted at Iraqi troops the boy had seen around his home.

The boy says the troops had left hours before and he was outside his house with his family when there was a "huge bang". The explosion killed his older sister and wounded both his parents.

'Tell mother'

Kuwaiti doctors say Mohammed only regained consciousness after he was airlifted to their hospital. The child's first words were to plead that his mother be contacted: "Tell her I am alive. It's been two days and she'll think I'm dead."

"All three children would have died if they had stayed in Iraq," says Ahmad Al-Shatti, of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health. "The medical team waiting for the first boy was one of the best available anywhere. Within four hours of our being alerted to his imminent arrival, he was undergoing very sophisticated surgical intervention."

One young Iraqi victim, now being treated

Kuwaiti hospitals had been preparing to treat huge numbers of civilians in a "worst case scenario" - one in which Iraq launched a successful military attack on Kuwait in retaliation for the emirate's support for the US-led war. The attack did not come.

Now there are hundreds of unoccupied beds in hospitals across Kuwait, with 160 spaces in just one institution alone.

"We are ready to accept injured Iraqi children who need specialised care not available in Iraq," says Mr Al-Shatti. "We are always in close contact with the Allies and will welcome any case, not just children, that they feel should be brought here."

Disparity in health care

A Kuwaiti medical team is also making regular trips across the border to the port town of Umm Qasr to assess which patients in its grim hospital require evacuation to Kuwait's plush medical facilities.

Even before the war, the disparity in health care provision between the neighbouring countries was stark. Kuwait had 189 doctors per 100,000 people, Iraq had just 55. The fighting has only further deepened the crisis north of the border. "The state of Iraq's hospital is really bad," says Tamara Al-Rifai of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who has carried out fact-finding missions in southern Iraq.

"They are overwhelmed by patients, but they lack supplies, water, personnel, electricity and beds."

While this situation means many Iraqis are in danger of dying from illness and disease, the plight of those wounded in the fighting is particularly perilous.

"Often these casualties need surgical intervention. For that you need water and also electricity to power the lights and machines."

The impoverished state of Iraq's medical infrastructure is unlikely to improve anytime soon. The Kuwaiti authorities have had to scale back the supplies being sent to Umm Qasr hospital, since doctors there could not prevent looters relieving them of the large shipments previously being sent over.

Colon injury post operation

The ICRC has now also judged the environment in the south to be too chaotic to send supplies into. "You can forget about taking anything into Iraq," says Ms Al-Rifai.

This leaves some Iraqi parents little option but to try to have their injured or ailing children taken to the excellent facilities just over the border, even if they risk being separated from them forever in the chaos.

One aid worker told BBC News Online that a father had asked him to smuggle his dying daughter into Kuwait. "You are her only hope," he pleaded.