NEW YORK, March 2: Ten years after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein dropped chemical weapons on the Kurdish city of Halabja in Northern Iraq, its citizens reportedly continue to suffer devastating physical ailments and deformities.The CBS news program "60 Minutes" broadcast an interview Sunday with what it said was the first Western doctor to observe the effects of the chemical attacks."I was devastated by what I found," said Dr Christine Gosden, head of medical genetics at Liverpool University, England. "I hadn't expected it to be on that scale."Saddam's forces rained mustard gas and other nerve agents on the remote city of 70,000 people in March 1988 because it had supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, CBS programme said. Five thousand people died in the attack, and the programme showed photos of the corpses that littered the streets in the days that followed.But the effects on the living continue to this day, including palsy, nerve damage, brain damage, incurable skin diseases, infertility andrampant cancers."What one sees is very rapidly advancing cancers of particularly horrible types," Gosden said. "I don't think anybody in 1998 should have to die of these circumstances."No international relief or medical agencies have conducted studies or offered aid to the victims, the program said. Gosden hopes to draw medical aid to victims.She compared the damage to that experienced by survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. "The skin conditions, in particular, were virtually untreatable," she said. Gosden said she found that damage had even extended to the victims' DNA, resulting in hideous birth defects that would continue for generations.Other victims shown included a woman with a severe respiratory ailment, and a man who was 9 years old when the bombs hit. Now 19, he has severe curvature of the spine and cannot walk."60 Minutes" trailed Gosden on one of her seminars for the region's Kurdish doctors six weeks ago. Three days after her arrival, Kurdishleaders warned her to be "very careful" because the Iraqis didn't want their atrocities broadcast to the world. They provided her with increased protection during her stay.
