Copyright 1998 Nando.net Copyright 1998 Reuters News Service
BAGHDAD (April 13, 1998 10:43 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - Scores of Iraqis, accusing the United States of genocide against their children, Monday buried 29 infants they said died from shortages of medicine caused by U.N. sanctions.
"We are facing a genocide against our people, especially against our children," said Sultan al-Shawi, head of the Iraqi Child Support Society, who headed the funeral procession.
"We participate in this funeral to show all over the world the cruelty of the U.S. against the people of Iraq because the U.S. administration (is) prolonging the embargo against Iraq, although Iraq obliged with all Security Council resolutions."
The 29 coffins, some for children as young as two months, were carried atop taxis in central Baghdad.
"There is no God but God! Clinton is the enemy of God! Clinton has killed your brother!" chanted the crowd of about 150 men and women. Most of the women wore black head-to-toe Islamic-style chadors.
Some women marchers wiped tears from their eyes as the procession passed. The coffins carried the picture, name and age of each child, some shown in hospital beds before or after death.
"God is Greatest, O Arabs ... Our children are being slaughtered!" shouted the women.
Iraqi officials say the infant mortality rate has risen sharply to 6,500 a month this year from 450 before the stringent economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Parliament Speaker Saadoun Hammadi Saturday said that 1.5 million Iraqis had died from shortages of food and medicine since 1990. He put the average monthly infant mortality rate at 7,500.
Speaking at an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Namibia, Hammadi said Baghdad had implemented the required U.N. resolutions and the Security Council should lift the embargo.
In an exception to the sanctions, Iraqi is currently allowed to sell oil worth $2 billion every six months to pay for food and medical supplies.
Meanwhile, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) said that U.N. weapons inspection teams went on surprise visits to 12 sites in Iraq while the resident team of chemical weapons inspectors visited two sites.
"The surveillance teams of the (U.N.) Special Commission continued their activity today with complete cooperation from the Iraqi side," INA reported. It is not known when visits to Iraq's eight so-called presidential sites would resume.
UNSCOM has to state that Iraq has dismantled all its weapons of mass destruction before the embargo can be lifted.
But U.N. officials have recently cited improved relations with Iraq since weapons inspectors and accompanying senior diplomats ended initial visits to the presidential sites.
The visits took place following a February agreement between Iraq and the United Nations defusing a crisis over access for arms inspectors and averting the threat of U.S.-led military strikes against Iraq.
Monday's funeral procession was joined by members of an Egyptian delegation of doctors and pharmacists who arrived on Friday bringing medicines and other medical supplies.
To highlight the suffering in Iraq, visiting British Labor MP George Galloway will take back with him a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia for treatment in Britain.
"You see these children, our children, they die every morning. In Baghdad alone, 50 children die (a day) because of the lack of food and medicine. They are deprived from their essential right to life and survival," Shawi said.
"We have many children dying all over Iraq because there are no emergency cars (ambulances). We can't transport them from other provinces to bring them to Baghdad to cure them," added Shawi, who spoke to reporters in English.
"I call upon all the people in the world to defend our children because by defending Iraqi children, they will be defending their children."
By HAITHAM HADDADIN, Reuters
