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IRAQ: Blames West For Children's Deformities
A physician and member of Iraq's Committee of Pollution Impact by Aggressive Bombing says the children of Iraqis who fought in the Gulf War are severely deformed because of depleted uranium on hundreds of thousands of shells fired on the soldiers.
At a conference today in London, Dr. Mona Kammas was expected to show a series of pictures of grotesquely deformed babies, with huge black growths on their heads, tiny heads, no feet or huge clefts in their backs. Their tiny bodies appear mangled, with distorted limbs and disfigured torsos.
Incidences of cancer, infertility and congenital abnormalities have increased dramatically, Kammas said, particularly in the south where battles occurred. The United States and United Kingdom are responsible and should pay for clean up, she added, calling the use of uranium-tipped shells "the first use of radiological weapons in the history of mankind."
Iraq's pollution committee analyzes the effect of uranium-packed ammunition on humans, animals and the environment. Kammas described signs indicating contamination from the weapons. Couples who had perfectly healthy babies before the Gulf War are now infertile, a cluster of lymphatic cancer cases has been documented near the southern city of Basra, thyroid cancer has doubled in the past 10 years, particularly in the south, and radiation is 10 times higher than normal, and even higher in the south.
"You don't find a family or a house without cancer or malformations from Basra to Mosul," Kammas said. "The international community must relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people from the serious deterioration of the quality of the environment and from unjustified sanctions."
Depleted uranium, a heavy metal, is a waste product of the nuclear industry. Fired at more than 1,000 meters per second, it can pierce tank armor or a block of concrete 3 meters underground.
Britain and the US do not deny that depleted uranium is dangerous. In 1990, just a few months before the Gulf War, the US Army issued a warning about how to handle accidents involving the substance. Documents released under the US Freedom of Information Act indicate that American forces fired a total of 944,000 rounds of uranium-tipped weapons with during the Gulf War.
American A-10 "tank-busters" also used uranium-tipped weapons against Serb targets in Kosovo, and British troops attached to the KFOR peacekeeping force are equipped with depleted uranium anti-tank weapons.
(Richard Norton-Taylor, London Guardian, 30 Jul).