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Dutch Troops Refuse In Iraq To Touch Depleted Uranium Debris
by M.H.J. van den Berg Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 at 8:33 AM
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Dutch troops refuse to handle depleted uranium

DU Contamination in Iraq: Dutch troops refuse to remove radioactive debris

RISQ News, 12 February 2004



Author: M.H.J. van den Berg

Residents of As Samawah in Southern Iraq are unduly exposed to radioactive debris as Dutch troops stationed in the area refuse to remove remnants of war contaminated with depleted uranium (DU).

This is the principle finding of a report obtained by RISQ from Mamoru Toyoda, a Japanese researcher and journalist who has been investigating DU-contamination in Iraq, and who visited the town of As Samawah last month. Equipped with a Geiger counter, Mr Toyoda measured radiation levels 300 times higher than normal in town, at the site of an abandoned anti-aircraft artillery stand.

Responding in detail to questions raised by RISQ, Mr Toyoda says the marks he found on the guns render it more than likely that the radiation is due to the impact of depleted uranium ordnance. According to local residents, the area was a military target twice in 1991 and 2003, when it came under heavy fire from US aircraft.

Immediately after "the war of the invasion", as residents called it, US military cleared the area, picking up unexploded ordnance and other debris. However, they refused to remove the artillery pieces without any explanation. Later, when residents asked Dutch troops, stationed in the area since August last year, to remove the artillery, they too refused to do so.

To date, the site has not been fenced off or marked by warning signs. In fact, as Mr Toyoda conveyed to RISQ, "he was horrified to find that many children were playing near and around the abandoned guns".

Mr Toyoda's finding comes shortly after Dutch troops found a depleted uranium shell in the area of the kind commonly used by the US Airforce against armoured targets. Both findings suggest that there may be more areas contaminated with depleted uranium in As Samawah. However, since the US government has so far been unwilling to disclose any information on DU-firing locations, the question remains as to where exactly such sites are located.

Of course, the lack of reliable information bears, before all, on concerns about the health and safety of the local population but it also implicates Dutch troops and the newly arriving Japanese units. The main problem is that the troops only know of areas contaminated more than ten years ago, during the Gulf War in 1991. About areas that have been contaminated recently, they have received no information.

http://www.risq.org.

http://www.risq.org/article282.html

engforum.pravda.ru

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