Two new stories on birth defects following US bombing

Children pay ultimate price of Iraq's poisonous wartime legacy

Irish Times reports (June 13^th): The effects of depleted uranium can be seen among the young in the city’s hospitals, where staff are convinced of its link to cancer and deformities.

“We are blind,” says Dr Ahmed Jafer, a paediatric specialist. “Ours is the only neo-natal unit in this region but we cannot quickly diagnose what exactly we are dealing with. Our children are dying from malnutrition, diarrhoea, TB, meningitis, leishmaniasis, chronic liver disease, pneumonia, anaemia and congenital heart disease, all of which are easily preventable outside of Iraq.”

Add to this the high incidence of miscarriages, up to 40 abortions every week, child leukaemia rates that more than doubled here from 1993 to 2007 and the weekly number of tumours and congenital deformities – missing eyes or limbs for example – that children are born with and you only begin to get a sense of the scale of the horror that has been visited on Basra’s children; indeed, on many more across Iraq – since UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein began during the first Gulf War in 1991.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0613/1224298811463.html

In Falluja, "monster babies" raise  questions over US weapons used in 2004

Cancer & Birth Defects Foundation reports (June 13^th): "Did the American army use nuclear weapons in Iraq?" This is the surprising question raised by France Info. In partnership with Paris-Match, Angélique Férat, radio correspondent for the area, returned to the city of Fallujah, about fifty kilometers from Baghdad. The city was attacked and partially destroyed by American forces in April 2004 and again in November the same year. Since then the city has seen a very high number of birth defects - so much so that, according to Angélique Férat, "almost every family has its own 'monster baby'". The Iraqi authorities refuse to consider the subject and there are no official statistics.

http://www.thecbdf.org/en/cbdf-news/34-press-releases/92-le-monde-report-on-birth-defects-in-falluja-in-falluja-qmonster-babiesq-raise-questions-over-us-weapons-used-in-2004