US forces have refused a Save the Children plane permission to land in northern Iraq to deliver aid, breaching the Geneva Convention and "costing children their lives", the aid agency has said.
Save the Children said in a statement released today it had been trying for more than a week to land a plane in Arbil carrying enough medical supplies to treat 40,000 people and emergency feeding kits for malnourished children.
A U.S. official told the charity no aid flights would be allowed until the area was safe but the U.N. has already declared Arbil a "safe and secure" area, the charity said.
"The doctors we are trying to help have been struggling against the odds for weeks to continue saving lives, but now the help we have promised them is being endlessly delayed," Emergency Programme Manager Rob MacGillivray said.
"The lack of cooperation from the U.S. military is a breach of the Geneva Conventions and its protocols but more importantly the time now being wasted is costing children their lives."
US officials were not immediately available for comment.
Under the Geneva Convention, occupying forces are obliged to protect civilians, restore law and order and open up space for humanitarian relief.
A spokeswoman for Save the Children said the plane would also carry medical officials. She said the charity had already taken vehicles into Arbil with money for hospitals but they now needed medical supplies.
The charity, who said the hospitals did not have sufficient water or power, also said the staff at one hospital had been forced to combat looters as they continued to work throughout fighting in the city.
Aid officials say Iraq is in desperate need of medical and food deliveries following a month of fighting and years of economic sanctions and misrule.
US war commander General Tommy Franks said that law and order was returning to Iraq following a wave of looting and that his forces were now firmly focused on aid and humanitarian operations.
Prior to the US-led attack on Iraq, 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people depended directly on a U.N.-backed oil-for-food programme, which allowed proceeds from Iraq's oil to be used to buy food while the country was under international economic sanctions.