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Iraq: more than 1.2 million children risk death in case of war |
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Saturday, 22 February 2003 |
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Nearly 30 percent of all Iraqi children under five, or more than 1.2 million children, "would be at risk of death from malnutrition" in the event of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to a confidential document UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), obtained by two anti-war groups and released Feb. 17.
The document, drafted Jan. 7, also finds that less than 40 percent of Iraqs entire population may have access to water if a military attack caused nationwide disruption. The document offers low-, medium-, and high-impact scenarios for a military campaign and notes that most UN planning to date is based on a "medium-impact" scenario, one which lasts two to three months and results in "considerable destruction of critical infrastructure and sizeable internal and external population movements." Access to war-affected civilians would be "severely limited" during the conflict. Meanwhile, UNICEF says it is racing to immunize 500,000 unprotected Iraqi children against measles, and a further four million against polio, before the expected U.S.-led attack shuts health operations down. |
