Iraq's new crisis: Moms, dads abandoning kids

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Iraq's new crisis: Moms, dads abandoning kids

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The head of Iraq's main humanitarian group said an 18-year-old approached him with a baby suffering from leukemia. The desperate mother said she'd do "anything" for treatment for her child -- and then offered herself up for sex.

Said Ismail Hakki breaks down in tears as he recalls that story. Leukemia can be treatable to a degree in much of the world, but not in Iraq. The baby died two months later.

"It shook me like hell," said Hakki, the president of the Iraqi Red Crescent. "All my life I've been a surgeon. I've seen blood; I've seen death. That never shook me -- none whatsoever. But when I see the suffering of those people, that really shook me."

The plight of Iraq's children is nearing epidemic proportions, he said, with mothers and fathers abandoning their children "because they're becoming a liability." The parents don't do it out of convenience, they do it out of desperation.

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Hakki says the spike in numbers of abandoned children is especially alarming, the result of sectarian violence and drastic socio-economic problems. The majority of parents in Iraq, he says, leave their children with a single relative who often has about 20 to 30 children to look after. Some parents just leave their kids altogether.

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Bush: "If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you'd be saying, 'God, I love freedom,' because that's what's happened."