US and Britain 'prepare for devastating war'

A SENIOR Iraqi official yesterday accused the US and Britain of preparing a "devastating" war against Iraq to subjugate the Middle East as coalition jets struck air defence targets in the south in the second attack this week.

They came as UN emergency planners said as many as half-a-million Iraqis could require medical treatment as a result of serious injuries suffered in the early stages of a war.

Fears of a new war are mounting with the US and Britain announcing the dispatch of thousands more troops and weapons to the Gulf region because of misgivings about Iraq's commitment to abandon weapons of mass destruction. Iraq insists it has no such weapons and maintains that claims to the contrary by Washington and London are simply a pretext for war. "The aggressors in Washington and London are preparing for a devastating aggression against ... the people of Iraq and they would like once again to destroy the City of Peace (Baghdad) as they did in 1991," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told a visiting South African delegation yesterday.