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Over 9,000 Iraqis Died in June Due to U.N. Sanctions
BAGHDAD, July 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than 9,000 Iraqis died in June due to the now 11-year sanctions regime against Iraq initiated by the United Nations, bringing the country's death toll to 1,508,006 since August 1990, the Iraqi Health Ministry announced this week.
The ministry's report, carried by the Iraqi News Agency (INA), said 9,080 people died as a result of food and medicine shortages in June, compared with 8,967 in May.
In June, some 6,078 children under the age of five died of diarrhea, pneumonia, respiratory infections and malnutrition, it said. In May, 5,712 children died due to the same causes.
The report added that 3,012 elderly people died of heart diseases, diabetes, hypertension and malignant neoplasms, in comparison to 3,255 in May.
Such a high mortality rate, resulting from malnutrition and severe medicine shortage caused by the sanctions, was in sharp contrast with the same period in 1989 - before the imposition of sanctions - when only 387 children and 434 elderly people died, the report said.
Iraq has long urged the U.N. to lift the sanctions, imposed in 1990, entirely. The U.N., in response, initiated a humanitarian program, launched in 1996, allowing Iraq to sell crude oil in order to finance imports of humanitarian goods to help offset the crippling impacts of the sanctions.
Under the "oil-for-food" program, approximately 72% of Iraq's petroleum revenues finance the humanitarian program, 25% goes to a fund set up to pay damages arising from Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, 2.2% covers U.N. costs for administering the program, and 0.8% for the administration of the U.N. Monitoring and Inspection Commission.
Baghdad has said the program fails to cover medical and food shortages brought on by the imposition of the sanctions.
The United Nations has responded by saying that the Iraqi government's handling of medicines and foodstuffs is the reason for the shortages, claiming Baghdad stockpiles medicines.
Iraq counters that the drugs stored cannot be used without other medicines and equipment, the arrival of which has been delayed.
According to a report issued by the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) carried by INA, almost one million children in southern and central Iraq are chronically malnourished.
"What we are seeing is a dramatic deterioration in the nutritional well-being of Iraqi children since 1991," said Phillipe Heffinck, the UNICEF representative in Baghdad.
In the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in 1991, laser guided bombs and uranium tipped weapons with an explosive power equal to that of seven Hiroshima nuclear blasts were used against Iraq, said the report.
The use of depleted uranium during that period caused an outbreak of new diseases and increased the incidence of leukemia, congenital deformities and hereditary diseases.
A UNICEF report to evaluate its work in Iraq during the past ten years affirmed that mortality rates among children under the age of five was 32% in 1996, in comparison with 18.7% in 1991.
The report showed that 54% of children suffered from diarrhea and 43% were infected with respiratory diseases. The report mentioned that children between the ages of six and eleven had left schools to get jobs in order to support their families financially. Statistics showed that the rate of dropouts was estimated at 22.6% between 1990 and 1998, as compared to seven percent from 1976 to 1993.
Under U.N. resolutions, the sanctions can be lifted only when Iraq proves it has no more weapons of mass destruction, and fulfills other conditions regarding its invasion of Kuwait.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Wednesday, the Iraqi permanent delegate to the U.N., Mohammad al-Duri, said that a total of 1,373 contracts, worth $3.4 billion, have been put on hold by the U.N. Sanctions Committee "under the pretext of dual use," news agencies reported.
"The suspension of contracts has reached an unbearable level," Duri said in the letter.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has transferred $75 million of Iraqi oil revenues to an account designated for the purchase of humanitarian relief, according to documents made public Thursday at U.N. headquarters in New York.
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