Sharon 'out of danger' after surgery

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon looks at his watch as he attends a session of the Knesset in Jerusalem in this July 12, 2004 file photo. Sharon, incapacitated by a January 4 stroke, underwent emergency surgery on February 11, 2006 for digestive complications, Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital said

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, comatose since a stroke last month, underwent emergency surgery to remove parts of a damagedintestineon Saturday and a hospital official said he was out of immediate danger.

Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Hadassah Hospital, said that while the surgery went well, Sharon's main problem remained his continuing state of unconsciousness and "the dramatic event this morning will not help him recover and is not a good sign."

Medical experts hold little hope for the 77-year-old leader's recovery after a massive brainhemorrhageon January 4. He has been in a coma since the stroke.

"The condition of Prime Minister Sharon is stable but critical," Mor-Yosef told reporters after the four-hour operation. "In the morning, there was really immediate danger to his life, but now ... (there is) no immediate danger."

Sharon was rushed to the operating theater after a CT scan revealed intestinal damage stemming from reduced blood flow that caused tissue to die.

"We removed 50 centimeters from his bowel, or 20 inches," Mor-Yosef said.

Earlier, a hospital source said doctors did not expect Sharon to survive the day and a hospital spokeswoman described his condition as the most critical since admission.

Sharon's death would almost certainly leave Ehud Olmert, named interim prime minister after Sharon's brain hemorrhage last month, in charge until elections in six weeks.

Olmert has stepped swiftly into the shoes of the former general who dominated the Middle East scene for decades, pledging to press ahead with Sharon's tough security policies and threatening to set Israel's final borders unilaterally if peacemaking with the Palestinians remained frozen.

Opinion polls predict the centrist Kadima party, which Sharon founded after a rebellion in his right-wing Likud over Israel's Gaza pullout last summer, will easily win the March 28 general election with Olmert at its helm.

Government officials said Olmert was being kept up to date on Sharon's condition and family members and a clutch of senior advisers rushed to the hospital.

Agencies)

intestine:（肠）

hemorrhage: excessive discharge of blood from the blood vessels; profuse bleeding（大出血）