|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
September 1st,
2009 - The Truth Of Iraq’s City Of Deformed Babies |
|
The Truth Of Iraq’s City Of
Deformed Babies By Lisa Holland Sky News September 1, 2009 Fifteen months ago a Sky
News investigation revealed growing numbers of children being born with
defects in Fallujah. Concerns were that the rise
in deformities may have been linked to the use of chemical weapons by US
forces. We recently returned to find
out the current situation and what has happened to some of the children we
featured. In May last year we told the
story of a three-year-old girl called Fatima Ahmed who was born with two
heads. When we filmed her she
seemed like a listless bundle - she lay there barely able to breathe and
unable to move. Even now and having seen the
pictures many times since I still feel shocked and saddened when I look at
her. But the prognosis for Fatima
never looked good and, as feared, she never made it to her fourth birthday. Her mother Shukriya told us
about the night her daughter died. Wiping away her tears,
Shukriya said she had put her daughter to bed as normal one night but woke
with the dreadful sense that something was wrong. She told us she felt it was
her daughter's moment to die, but of course that does not make the pain any
easier. Fatima's father had taken
his little girl's hand but it was cold. "She is gone," he
had said to his distraught wife. Another girl we met last
year was Tiba Aftan who was born with a huge growth across her face. Now she is a toddler her
future is looking brighter having gone to neighbouring Jordan to have it
removed. The growth had covered half
of Tiba's forehead and was invading one of her eyes - and it was getting
bigger as she got older. Although the operation was a
success Tiba will need more surgery and the last trip cost her family almost
every penny they have. But since our original
investigation, we have built up a new dossier of cases of deformed children
in Fallujah born in the last eight months. There are a wide range of
problems - from abnormalities of the abdomen to facial disfigurements. We have also seen pictures
of all kinds of deformed foetuses which have not survived. There is no precise
explanation as to what has caused the deformities and there are no figures to
compare cases with those a decade or more ago as records were not kept during
the time of Saddam Hussein. All of our evidence is
anecdotal, but repeatedly people tell us they believe the deformities must be
linked to the heavy bombardment of Fallujah - a Sunni insurgent stronghold -
by America in 2004. People want an independent
investigation into the impact of the kinds of weapons used - including
controversial white phosphorus. Yet even since we first
started to give a voice to the calls for help from the people of Fallujah
things seem to have got worse. Dr Ahmed Uraibi, a
specialist paediatrician in Fallujah, told us that the number of deformities
he has dealt with has increased in the last year. The people of Fallujah want
to know how many more deformed babies there will be before someone sits up
and takes notice of them. External link: http://tinyurl.com/npsepk |