import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.parse(urllib2.urlopen(url))
for child in root.findall("item"):
  a1 = child[0].text # ok
  a2 = child[1].text # ok
  a3 = child[2].text # ok
  a4 = child[3].text # BOOM
  # ...

<item>
  <a1>value1</a1>
  <a3>value2</a2>
  <a3>value3</a3>
  <a4>
    <a11>value222</a11>
    <a22>value22</a22>
  </a4>
</item>