Iraqis suffer from effects of US biological weapons: Iran MP

An Iranian lawmaker says biological weapons used by the United States in Iraq have caused cancer among the people and defects in newborn babies.

“Water and soil in Iraq have been contaminated by the American biological weapons which have caused various diseases among the Iraqi people,” Abed Fattahi said on Wednesday.

The Iranian lawmaker went on to say that Iraq’s environment was adversely affected at the end of the US-led war which will continue to have impacts on the future of the Iraqi people.

Fattahi also noted that the United States’ military campaigns in some Middle East countries have not only affected those countries but have also resulted in similar impacts on their neighboring states.

The MP said the flow of groundwater from Iraq to Iran has led to appearance of certain diseases in some parts of Iran whose main cause is the use of biological and uranium weapons in Iraq by the US army.

US-led forces attacked Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction. But no such weapons was ever discovered in Iraq. At the peak of the US-led military operations in Iraq, there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.

All US troops left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a 2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries.