The 10-year-old UN sanctions have claimed lives of over 1.2 million Iraqi children by the end of last November, said Iraqi Health Minister Omid Medhat Mubarak on January 11.

Mubarak was quoted by the Iraqi News Agency as saying that 502,000 children died under five and some 748,400 others died before they were of age.

He said that the high child mortality rate was caused by the acute dearth of medicines and medical equipment and prerequisites.

The most common diseases that led to the massive deaths of children included respiratory infections, severe diarrhea, intestines inflammations and malnutrition, he said.

The child mortality rate is 108 per thousand living births, which is much higher than normal, he added.

Mubarak said the embargo had also prevented 74.7 percent of big surgical operations and 68.6 percent of laboratory examinations from being conducted.

He said that a number of diseases that Iraq had eradicated before the imposition of the UN sanctions in 1990 had re-emerged because of sharp shortage of medicines.

The minister said the feverish attempts by the US and British delegates at the UN Sanctions Committee to put on hold important medical contracts were the fundamental reason of the high child mortality rates and the suffering of the Iraqi children in particular.

Baghdad has long accused the US and British envoys of deliberately blocking the approval of its contracts signed under the oil-for-food program and impeding the implementation of this program.

The UN imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

In December 1996, the UN started to implement the oil-for-food program in Iraq, which allows Iraq to sell limited amount of oil every six months to buy humanitarian supplies for its people reeling under the sanctions. (Xinhua)