Blair promises to help the boy who lost his arms in Baghdad air strike

Tony Blair has pledged to do "everything we can to help" a 12-year-old Iraqi orphan, Ali Ismail Abbas, who lost both arms when his home in Baghdad was bombed.

The Prime Minister told the Commons yesterday that the Government was talking to the US about how to provide medical aid to the boy, whose photograph has been widely featured in newspapers.

But Downing Street emphasised that helping Ali would not be easy because the hospital where he is being treated is in an area of Baghdad which has not yet been declared safe by Allied forces.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said there were security problems with flying the boy out of Iraq or sending a team to care for him. "There are real security concerns that are still there," he said.

A national media campaign has emerged to help Ali, who lost both of his parents and several family members when his house was bombed. But the British Limbless Association said his case had not received the same kind of attention in America and that there was a problem in evacuating Ali from US-controlled Baghdad.

"He has been on the news every night for nearly a week in Britian," a spokeswoman said, "and, as a result of donations, we can afford to medi-vac him from the area. But that is not the case with US television. There just doesn't seem to be the will from the Americans."

She added: "Two people were flown out of Basra for hospital treatment in Britain. But Basra is under British military occupation and Baghdad is under American control."

Ali is in danger of dying from blood poisoning if his wounds are not given specialist treatment soon.

Mr Blair said Britain was "seeing what we can do for Ali and in respect of others". He said two other children suffering from burns had been flown to Britain for specialist treatment. A six-month-old girl is already receiving expert care, and a boy in his early teens has been flown to a hospital in the UK in the past 24 hours. Both children are from the British controlled areas of Iraq, which include Basra.

Ali's nurse has warned that he will die unless he is removed from Baghdad and given specialist treatment, possibly in Kuwait. Hospitals in Baghdad are overstretched and are running out of medical supplies, including oxygen and anaesthetics.

Britain has been criticised for withdrawing a medical ship and a field clinic while thousands of injured civilians face death. The Red Cross has warned that 33 out of 35 hospitals in Baghdad are "no longer functioning". There have been reports of doctors operating on children without anaesthesia.