FALLUJAH – Doctors in Fallujah say the rise in birth defects in the Iraqi city has been caused by the use of depleted uranium weapons.

Parents in Fallujah also believe the sharp increase in the number of birth defects has been caused by the highly sophisticated weapons U.S. troops have used in the city during the war.
The number of heart defects found in newborn babies is 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe, doctors in the city told BBC on Thursday.
Last week, an Iraqi minister said that Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium weapons in country.
Iraqi Minister of Human Rights Wijdan Mikhail Salim told the Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be filed based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment. According to the reports, during the first year of the U.S. and British war on Iraq, both countries repeatedly used weapons containing depleted uranium.
U.S. troops carried out a major offensive in the city in 2004.
British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC that one doctor compared the number of birth defects from before 2003 to today. Before the war began, she saw about one case every two months. Now she sees cases every day.
Her research shows that as of January 2010, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births or 13 times Europe's rate.
“I've seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead,” she told the BBC