Iraq Starts Legal Proceedings to Sue US for Uranium Bombings
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iraq filed a lawsuit against the US for bombing the Arab country with depleted uranium several times over the course of two decades.
On Tuesday, Iraq’s al-Maaloumah news website reported the initiation of the legal proceedings related to the bombing spats that plagued Iraq with rampant and deadly radioactive contamination.
The lawsuit was lodged by Hatif al-Rikabi, the Iraqi parliament’s legal advisor, with a Swedish court in Stockholm on December 26.
The suit demands compensation for the repercussions of the bombings that targeted the country’s former nuclear installations twice in the 1990s and once in the 2000s, said al-Rikabi, who is also a member of Baghdad’s negotiation team with the United Nations.
He said the weapons used in the assaults included bombs and missiles.
The Iraqi legal team is trying to have the United Nations issue a resolution that would oblige Washington to pay the reparations.
Attacks against the former Iraqi regime’s nuclear facilities that also include one Israeli aerial assault in 1981 have afflicted the country with such contamination levels that have so far led to thousands of deaths.
The fatalities have been ascribed to the various kinds of cancer, apoplexy, and endless birth defects that have resulted from the fallout of the attacks.
During 2004, the US military also laid two massive military sieges to the city of Fallujah, using large quantities of depleted uranium ammunition.
Officials statistics show that by 2005, cancer rate in Iraq had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Prior to the First Persian Gulf War in 1991, the rate had stood at 40 out of 100,000 people.