Half million Iraqi children die from the economic embargo

Iraq on Thursday officially announced in a report it had submitted to the human rights committee at the UN in Geneva that almost half a million Iraqi children have died because of the embargo imposed on it since 1990.

The report warned that there is a grave crisis which is threatening the whole population of Iraq, foremost being children as the most vulnerable, through the spread of cancerous diseases resulting from the use of depleted uranium shells by the US and Britain during the Gulf War in 1991.

In March, the Iraqi Ministry of Health said that more 9,000 Iraqis died in February 2000 because of the embargo, and therefore number of people who have died in Iraqi since the imposing of the sanctions rose to 1,283,118.