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Published by BBC last Wednesday: *Funeral services have been held for 68 people who Iraqi officials say were killed in the raids. But Iraq's Ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, said: "I'm told that the casualties are in the thousands in terms of numbers of people who were killed or wounded." Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said 62 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 180 wounded in the attacks. He did not detail civilian casualties, saying only that they were much higher. But because the Iraqi authorities control journalists' access to damage sites, confirmation of this has been impossible. The UK Ministry of Defence said it was not certain that the full facts about Iraqi casualties would ever be known. The Iraqi authorities say the air strikes deliberately targeted civilian facilities including hospitals, colleges, residential areas of Baghdad and food storage areas. Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children's fund, Unicef, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They said a warehouse containing rice was destroyed in Tikrit in northern Iraq, ten schools in the southern port city of Basra were damaged, and an agricultural college in Kirkuk in northern Iraq received a direct hit. They said that in Baghdad medical and maternity centres, a water supply system and parts of the health and social affairs ministries were damaged. Following Iraqi claims of civilian casualties, the UK Ministry of Defence held a briefing showing detailed slides of damaged targets, including one target - a military garrison - where there had been a near miss. This was shown to illustrate that even the misses came close enough to cause considerable damage.* ______________________________________________________ Harriet Griffin Environmental Change Unit University of Oxford 5 South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3UB United Kingdom Phone: ++ 44 (0)1865 281210 Fax: ++ 44 (0) 1865 281202 E-mail: harriet.griffin@ecu.ox.ac.uk ______________________________________________________ -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html