Iraqis poisoned by nuclear waste

When the electricity went out during the war in Iraq, the water-pumping station that serves the area 50 kilometres south-east of Baghdad shut down. That was when men from a nearby village broke through the fence guarding "Location C" at Saddam Hussein's nuclear complex.

They say they broke into the warehouse, emptied hundreds of barrels of yellow and brown mud, took them to the wells and filled them with water for cooking, bathing and drinking.

For nearly three weeks, villagers bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels. The barrels, Iraqi and foreign experts say, had held uranium ores, low-enriched uranium "yellowcake", nuclear sludge and other by-products.

Some villagers became nauseous. Others developed rashes that made them itch. Some contracted ailments that they now attribute to radioactive contamination. It may take years to determine the effects from the radiation poisoning that occurred before US military forces arrived to seal off this nuclear complex.

Questions have been raised by international inspectors about why, despite US assurances that coalition forces had secured the complex, looters roamed freely for days, ransacking vaults and warehouses that contain radioactive poisons that could be used to manufacture "dirty bombs".

Yesterday UN nuclear experts in protective suits examined a looted storage warehouse. The seven-member International Atomic Energy Agency team was working under tight military escort. The US and British occupation authority will not allow them to survey the contamination in villages like this one.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the atomic agency, expressed concern about security at Tuwaitha on April 10, the day after Baghdad fell. US marines who inspected the plant during their push to Baghdad reported that looting was rampant at the plant. Army officials who checked the site soon after found high radiation levels.

Ever since then agency officials had pressed for access to the site.

- New York Times, Reuters