Baghdad's busy ambulance drivers catch their breath

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - With violence levels dropping across the city, Baghdad's hard-working ambulance drivers now find time to sit and sip tea instead of each rushing to four or five emergency calls a day.

"Today the situation has changed for the best. There are ambulances that sometimes do not go out on duty for two days," said Kais Mohammed, head of an emergency services centre that covers all of southern Baghdad and some areas west.

Baghdadis had become used to the wail of sirens and the sight of red-and-white ambulances speeding through the city's chaotic streets in response to a relentless daily toll of bombings and shootings.

Sectarian violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Iraq since the February 2006 bombing of a revered Shi'ite mosque in predominantly Sunni Arab Samarra, north of Baghdad, unleashed waves of reprisal killings.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have reported sharp falls in Iraqi and U.S. military casualties in the past two months after a "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. troops was completed in mid-June.

Improving Iraqi security forces and the spread of neighbourhood police units, mainly organised by Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs to drive out al Qaeda fighters, have also made significant contributions to a more stable Iraq, officials say.

It has lightened the burden for Baghdad's ambulance drivers, who found no shortage of work during the capital's darkest days.

Southern Baghdad's main emergency ambulance centre controls 16 stations across the south and west of the sprawling city, each of which has three ambulances. Each ambulance has rotating teams of three drivers and three first aid workers.