BAGHDAD: ARAB NEWS
Thursday 20 December 2012

American ammunition may be the reason behind the mounting number of babies born with birth defects in Iraq, a study revealed.

Accounts of children being born with cancer and birth defects have been highlighted in German newspaper Der Spiegel, where Iraqis who were interviewed were not sure of the explanation behind so many dead and deformed newborn babies in Basra, according to Al Arabia.

“Some had only one eye in the forehead. Or two heads,” Askar Bin Said, an Iraqi graveyard owner, told the newspaper, describing some of the dead newborn babies that are buried in his cemetery. “One had a tail like a skinned lamb. Another one looked like a perfectly normal child, but with a monkey’s face. Legs of one girl had grown together, half fish, half human,” he added.

The report cites a study published in September in the Germany-based Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology saying there was a “sevenfold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003. Of 1,000 live births, 23 had birth defects.”

“War pollution — due to everything from heavy metals from exploded ordnance to radiation left behind by depleted uranium used on US ammunition and tanks — inhaled by Fallujah’s residents, seeped into the ground water, flowing in the nearby Tigris River, choking the air they breathe,” a report from Global Research said on Tuesday.