http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030908/hl_afp/iraq_children_030908042256BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s children were the first victims of the sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf war (news - web sites), and now they are paying the heaviest price in the chaos that has followed the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
Deprived of basics by the international isolation of the country and used as a symbol by Saddam's propaganda machine, Iraqi children continue to suffer from the same ills in the troubled "peace" that has followed his overthrow by US-led forces in April.
They fall prey to diarrhoea, infection, malnutrition and other diseases -- illnesses that are the result of poverty and would easily be prevented if their families had access to clean water and proper food.
Five-month-old Ali's emaciated body appears all the more fragile in the large bed in Baghdad's Aliwiya children's hospital where he has been laid up for the past week. He weighs just three kilos.
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