-
- After insisting throughout its air bombardment of
Yugoslavia
that its use of depleted uranium munitions against Serb
forces posed no
hazard to human health, Nato officers in Kosovo now
admit that particles
from their shells may have contaminated soil near
targets in Yugoslavia
and could cause "inhalation" problems,
especially for children.
-
- There has been a growing outcry against munitions
containing
depleted uranium (DU) - a waste product of the nuclear
industry - since
it was used in armour-piercing projectiles in the 1991
Gulf war. In the
eight years since, hundreds of Iraqis living near the
battlefields have
died from mysterious cancers and grossly deformed
children have been born
to Iraqi soldiers who fought in the war.
British and American veterans
suffering from Gulf war syndrome suspect
that the use of DU weapons caused
their own sickness and
cancers.
-
- In briefings to international aid workers in Pristina,
one
K-For officer has warned his audience of "contaminated dust"
at the scene of DU munitions explosions and urged aid officials to stay
150 feet away from targets hit in Nato air strikes. But non-governmental
organisations have been amazed to hear that Nato cannot - or will not -
say where it used DU ordnance against Serb forces. "There is no
releasable
information about where it was used and when," a K-For
spokesman told
The Independent. He would give no reason for Nato's
refusal to provide
these details.
-
- Officially, K-For warns aid
workers to beware of all
Kosovo battle sites - especially the danger
posed by unexploded cluster
bombs - but the records of one major aid
organisation in Pristina show
that on 13 and 20 August a K-For officer
was twice asked by United Nations
officials about the dangers of DU
projectiles fired by American A-10 Warthog
ground-attack aircraft. The
officer - believed to have been British - spoke
of "the danger of
the spread of contaminated dust".
-
- The Pentagon says that in the
1991 Gulf war, more than
860,000 DU rounds were fired by United States
and - to a much lesser extent
- British forces. In following years,
doctors in southern Iraq were stunned
to find an exponential increase
in child cancers and deformities among
families living near the old
battlefields or close to targets hit by US
forces. One Iraqi doctor's
report in Basra last year recorded three babies
born without heads in
August along with four with abnormally large heads,
six babies born
with no heads in September and two with short limbs. In
October 1998,
another baby was born without a head and four with oversize
heads.
-
- Nor
were DU munitions used in Kosovo only against armour,
as Nato claimed.
One aid worker found exploded DU rounds at a defence installation
near
Djakovica. "There were no vehicles there, but I found the tops
of
the rounds," he told me.
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