A government statement said that 47 out of 139 water samples tested in Baghdad recently showed contamination, and that the percentage of polluted water in other Iraqi cities was higher. The statement quoted a letter that National Assembly Speaker Saadoun Hammadi sent to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan saying that "30 out of every 1,000 Iraqis are deprived of drinking water altogether because of the inability to execute the development projects in the past 10 years."

Iraq has been living under U.N.-imposed trade sanctions since its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The United Nations has acknowledged that the embargo has led to growing unavailability of clean water in the country.

Hammadi said his country had been forced to stop completely plans to establish new drinking projects in Iraq, "including a huge water project that was planned for Baghdad."

The statement said that drinking water pipes and networks have been damaged with time "due to the inability to upgrade them because of the difficult economic circumstances resulting from the sanctions imposed on Iraq." It added that an unspecified number of people have died in the past years "for drinking water that has been unfit for human consumption, thus suffering from different diseases."

U.N. agencies have said that 5,500 Iraqi children die every month from preventable diseases that were almost non-existent before the sanctions.