US enriched uranium weapons caused Fallujah cancer, study finds

A new study found that both in the hair of the parents and in the environmental samples in the Iraqi city, the ratio of isotopes was significantly low, implying the presence of man-made Enriched Uranium and not Depleted Uranium as previously thought.

With the high level dating back to 2005, it concludes that a uranium based weapon of some type was employed by the US in its notorious in Battle of Fallujah.

"What we have found makes it perfectly clear that a new generation of Uranium based weapons exists, is being employed in all modern battlefields," said Professor Chris Busby, one of the authors of the joint UK-Iraq report.

Busby said the result has been "shocking increases in cancer and congenital illness in innocent civilians and soldiers alike, and is the main cause of the high levels of cancer and congenital disease,"

Remarkably high levels of congenital anomaly at birth, together with high cancer rates in Fallujah, Iraq, were previously found in an earlier joint UK-Iraqi epidemiological study published in the International Journal of Environment and Public Health in July 2010.

The illnesses and unusual changes in the sex-ratio at birth, were shown to appear following the US-led attacks on the town, with many believing DU weapons were used but no evidence of this was available and was denied by the US.

The new study, published in Conflict and Health, examined the contamination of the parents of the children with congenital anomalies using hair samples from 25 fathers and mothers, particularly with long hair, as well as oil and water samples.

"These findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases." it concluded.

Busby, visiting professor at the University of Ulster in Belfast, said that with evidence of enriched uranium weapons being used in other places, like in Lebanon, it was "most likely" they have been used by Nato in Libya.

"What we see is the deployment of a device of indiscriminate effect with terrible and indiscriminate consequences," he warned. 

The professor also spoke of attempts to stop the joint UK-Iraq investigation, to prevent the findings from being published and even hackers being used. 

"There has been a sustained effort to stop us making this study and then to stop us publishing it."

"We have been attacked by people writing to our funders so we had no money to pay for the analyses, to the journals we were sending the study to even before we sent it, to our Universities and Hospitals and Institutions," he said.

"It was rejected by The Lancet without even being sent for Peer Review. It was rejected by the International Journal of Environment and Public Health where we published our previous paper," Busby said.

He suggested that pressure was brought on the editor from outside "by people who hacked into the computers of the authors and knew about the paper before the journal received it."

"The implications of this discovery are extremely serious," Busby warned, adding that it shows "uranium is now being used routinely in anti-personnel weapons and no longer only in anti-tank weapons."

"It means that the focus of the NGOs on banning Depleted Uranium (DU) is misplaced and such a ban pointless since DU has not been deployed for a long time as the military rightly (and with some concealed amusement) say," he said.

"The local civilian effects and global civilian exposures to this material represents a human rights issue of the greatest magnitude," he believed.

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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30623408