Iraqi Kurd poison gas victims sue for damages

A court in the Netherlands is hearing a case by Kurdish victims of poison gas attacks in northern Iraq in the 1980s.

They want compensation from a Dutch businessman, who sold chemicals - which were used against the Kurds - to Saddam Hussein's government.

Frans van Anraat, 67, was convicted in the Netherlands in 2005 of war crimes and sentenced to 16-and-a-half years in jail.

Other courts have refused to award damages to the 16 victims.

The courts have said that it would be too difficult to get the money from Van Anraat, who says he spent all his cash fleeing from country to country after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

More than 5,000 people were killed in March 1988 when Saddam Hussein ordered an attack on the Kurdish Iraqi town of Halabja, as part of a campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion.

Some of the survivors were left permanently disabled, suffering lung damage, blindness and skin diseases.

Van Anraat was convicted of complicity in war crimes, but cleared of genocide at his trial four years ago.

Source:bbc.co.uk

Netherlands reports mutant swine flu death

THE HAGUE — Dutch authorities said Thursday a patient infected by a mutant strain of the swine flu virus had died, but added that this was not the cause of death.

Harald Wychgel, spokesman for the Dutch Institute for Health and the Environment, told AFP that there had been a "minor change in the virus to make it resistant to Tamiflu," a key treatment for influenza.

"He died not because the virus was resistant but because he was seriously ill and caught the Mexican (swine) flu," Wychgel said.

The man, whose age had not been given, died Sunday in the northern city of Groningen, local health official Hans Coenraads said.

"We have carried out tests on the patient's associates to see if the mutation had spread but we found no such indications", he said.

Reports said that two more patients in the Netherlands had shown resistance to Tamiflu.

It is the fifth fatal case of mutated A(H1N1) flu in Europe, after two in France and two in Norway.

The World Health Organisation said last month that mutations had been observed in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, where the swine flu pandemic began, Ukraine, and the United States, as early as April.

Italy also reported a non-fatal case on Monday.

"The mutations appear to occur sporadically and spontaneously. To date, no links between the small number of patients infected with the mutated virus have been found and the mutation does not appear to spread," a WHO statement said on November 20.

The WHO also underlined that there was no evidence of more infections or more deaths as a result, while the mutated virus detected up to that point remained sensitive to antiviral drugs used to treat severe flu, oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).

Scientists fear that mutations in flu viruses could cause more virulent and deadly pandemic flu. The global health watchdog reiterated a call for close monitoring.

"Although further investigation is under way, no evidence currently suggests that these mutations are leading to an unusual increase in the number of H1N1 infections or a greater number of severe or fatal cases," it added.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5juid1oN4-ENLnkxORQjjF8vJtIiw