Depleted uranium munitions: what are they and what risks do they pose?

The US has announced it is sending depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine, following Britain’s lead in sending the controversial munitions to help Kyiv push through Russian lines in its gruelling counteroffensive.

The 120mm rounds will be used to arm the 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks the US plans to deliver to Ukraine in the coming months.

The armour-piercing rounds were developed by the US during the cold war to destroy Soviet tanks, including the same T-72 tanks that Ukraine faces in its counteroffensive.

Ten Years Later, U.S. Has Left Iraq With Mass Displacement & Epidemic of Birth Defects, Cancers

In part two of our interview, Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail discusses how the U.S. invasion of Iraq has left behind a legacy of cancer and birth defects suspected of being caused by the U.S. military’s extensive use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus. Noting the birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Jamail says: "They’re are extremely hard to bear witness to, but it’s something that we all need to pay attention to ... What this has generated is from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II." Jamail has also reported on the refugee crisis of more than one million displaced Iraqis still inside the country, who are struggling to survive without government aid, a majority of them living in Baghdad.

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Source: Democracy Now!
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