NASSIRIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Doctors supporting U.S. Marine combat operations in Iraq had to brush up their child delivery skills on Wednesday when a young Iraqi woman was brought to their base and gave birth to a baby girl.The woman, Jamila Katham, approached a U.S. military ambulance in a patrol in the Nassiriya area of southern Iraq early on Wednesday to seek help, U.S. Marine surgeons said.
Katham's family was concerned about her because she had been in labor for a long time, they said.
Surgeons Lieutenant Sean Stroup and Lieutenant Michael Humble delivered her of a healthy six-pound girl only 20 minutes after the ambulance had brought her to a U.S. Marine camp.
The baby, Katham's first child, has been named Rogenia. "I think they wanted an American-sounding name," Stroup said.
"The grandmother wanted Americana or something, but the mother wanted Rogenia," said Stroup, of San Jose, California.
The mother and child, both said to be doing well, were given food, water and bandages and were later driven home in a U.S. military ambulance.
The doctors said the family were internally displaced people and were living in a tent city south of Nassiriya.
Nassiriya has been rocked by fighting over the past week. Earlier, U.S. Marines staged a decoy attack to cover the rescue of a female prisoner of war from a Nassiriya hospital where she had been held since her convoy was ambushed on March 23.
The birth is the kind of good publicity U.S. forces sorely need as they try to win Iraqi hearts and minds in the face of a rising death toll among civilians which has sparked anger in Iraq and across the Islamic world.
U.S. and British commanders are keen to get humanitarian aid flowing to Iraqi cities but say the effort has been slowed by the unexpectedly stiff resistance put up by supporters of President Saddam Hussein in many cities including Nassiriya.
