The suffering of the Iraqi civilians during the ongoing war have made many people around me indignant and heart-broken.

　　The number of innocent civilians, many women and children, that were killed in the war had reached 1,252 by April 3. Over 5,000 injured, according to Iraqi estimates.

　　While some may question the accuracy of this figure, there is little doubt about the fact that large numbers of injured civilians have overloaded hospitals in Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities.

　　Is this a war to“liberate?the Iraqi people or inflict more suffering and terror upon them?

　　Over the last two decades, the Iraqi people have already suffered from huge losses of life during the war with Iran and the 1991 Gulf War. The ensuing sanctions alone have led directly to the death of 1 million Iraqi children.

　　In the last 20 days, the samesgroupsof innocent people have been suffering from the terror of bombing every day by US and British forces in their invasion to find weapons of mass destruction that they have not found yet.

　　Don’t tell people that the lives of Iraqi civilians are treasured as much as American and British soldiers. Insgroupsto kill Iraqi military, the best equipped and most powerful US military are actually killing and injuring Iraqi civilians every day and every hour.

　　Cluster bombs, Napalm and depleted uranium (DU) shells have all been used during the last 20 days, despite the protest of international human rights groups.

　　According to statistics, about 5 to 30 per cent of the submunitions or bomblets in the cluster bombs fail to explode and retain their deadly features. Typically they will explode immediately when touched.

　　The DU shells are mostly vapourizedsintostiny particles and can be carried by wind for many miles after exploding. The tiny particles can become trapped inside the human body for long periods of time, creating serious health problems.

　　The so-called Gulf War Syndrome experienced by US veterans in the last decade and the extremely abnormal rates of cancer, birth defects and miscarriages in the Iraqi areasswheresDU was used has been widely blamed on depleted uranium.

　　The war to“liberate?Iraqi people has also destroyed many infrastructural facilities essential for their daily life. In the days of siege of Basra, people were forced to suffer from hunger and thirst. But in the Western media, the US and British forces were described as offering humanitarian aid ?not mentioning the humanitarian disaster they caused.

　　George W. Bush, Tony Blair and US military spokesman have constantly referred to Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries ?people who are defending their own country ?as terrorists, but to me it’s the US and British forces that have been imposing terror on Iraq over the last 20 days.