Algeria, EU to send humanitarian aid to Iraq

Algeria will extend humanitarian assistance, made up of milk and medicine, to Baghdad following the U.S-British air strikes against Iraq.

Spokesman of the Algerian foreign affairs department, Abderrahmane Sebaa said the relief is extended by the Algerian Red Crescent and other ministries.

Algeria had decried the four-day bombing campaign against Iraq.

Meanwhile, the European Union announced Monday plans to send humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi civil population.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the European Union wants to find new ways of helping the Iraqi people without going through President Saddam Hussein. "We have agreed that during the next few months, Europe should try to take a fresh initiative to try to target food and medicine to those who need it in Iraq."

German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, whose country is to take over next January the EU's rotating chairmanship, hoped this would create a situation where military action is no longer needed.

In Baghdad, Iraqi television showed Monday, for the first time, a 20-minute documentary on some civilian targets hit by American-British missiles. Pictures showed damage to a ten-story hospital, the national library and a palace in Baghdad dating back to the 12th century. Other pictures showed two houses hit by missiles, a flour warehouse destroyed and a cotton factory hit by a missile.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had said that 62 military were killed and 180 others were wounded in the US-British raids against Iraq and although he gave no figures on the death toll among civilians, he said their number is larger than the number of military victims.