By Richard Schapiro

Sickly patients packed into rooms like sardines. Psych patients attacking harried hospital staffers. Nurses forced to treat up to 12 critically ill children at the same time.

The Montefiore Medical Center emergency units are often dangerously overcrowded and unruly — imperiling the lives of the ailing Bronx residents who flock there, said nurses.

“It looks like a refugee camp in a war zone,” said nurse Benny Matthew, 41, who works at the main Moses Campus’ ER in the Norwood section of the Bronx. “I’m from India. Even if I go to an emergency room in my country, I don’t see things like this.”

City councilman Ritchie Torres, alarmed by the harrowing accounts from hospital staffers, sent a letter to the Department of Investigation on Friday calling for an immediate probe.