April 5, 1999
Two American groups trying to draw attention to the plight of Iraqis living under U.N. sanctions donated $50,000 worth of medicines and books to Iraq on Monday. The items were donated to hospitals and Baghdad University's medical school by the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness and the Seattle-based Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Dr. Sue Wareham said the physicians' group donated $28,000 worth of antibiotics to Iraqi hospitals. The group comprises 25 doctors, medical students, nurses and activists from various countries. "The de facto withholding of medicines and food from a population for political reasons is contrary to all medical and humanitarian ethics and is a totally unacceptable violation of human rights," said Wareham, an Australian. The American members of the groups are violating U.S. Treasury regulations by traveling to Iraq.
The U.N. Children's Fund estimates that 500,000 children have died of malnutrition and a shortage of medicine since sanctions were imposed after Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990. Meanwhile, Iraq said Monday that U.S. and British missiles struck a communications system that controls an oil pipeline. The allied planes, which patrol ``no-fly'' zones over Iraq, have been blasting air defense sites and communications centers in the past four months.
The attack Sunday destroyed the system that controls oil flow from the Bazergan oil fields 230 miles southeast of Baghdad to the exporting terminal at al-Bakr port, the official Iraqi News Agency said. A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the flow of oil was not affected because the pipeline was not hit, and because communications were shifted to another facility.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf protested the attack in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, INA reported. On Sunday, U.S. officials said allied fighters attacked a surface-to-air missile battery and two unspecified communications sites south of Baghdad in response to Iraqi violations of the southern "no fly" zone. "No fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq were declared to protect Kurdish and Shiite dissidents from attacks by Iraqi armed forces.
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