Shocking Images of Innocence Lost in Iraq War

As is the case with most human conflicts, children and women were the worst affected in the Iraq war that has bled the troubled country for so long.

Many children in the war-ravaged nation were forced to abandon their childhoods and face the horrifying reality of war, thanks to George W Bush's search for fictitious weapons of mass destruction.

Rediff.com presents some heart-wrenching images of innocence lost in the seven-year-old long bloodshed.

US Navy Hospital Corpsman Richard Barnett, assigned to the First Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in this March 29, 2003 file photo.

Confused front line crossfire ripped apart an Iraqi family after local soldiers appeared to force civilians towards positions held by US Marines.

The Iraq war started on March 20.

Girls stand near a US soldier, taking up position, during the opening of a school after its renovation in Baghdad's Shorja market district on January 27, 2009.

An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while US and Iraqi soldiers search her family house in Baquba in early June 30, 2007.

Iraqi children swim in the fountain in the Square of the Unknown Soldier in central Baghdad on May 6, 2003. Due to high temperatures and lack of running water in the city, children have been swimming in the stagnant water for refreshment.

Sergeant Donald Herring distributes balloons to children during a joint patrol with Iraqi army soldiers in Baghdad's Mansur district on May 6, 2008

Iraqi children look out of a window at US soldiers from the Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment, securing a meeting between local tribe leaders and Iraqi and US security forces, near Muqtadiyah in Diyala province on July 25, 2008.

Al Qaeda has sought to stoke tensions in Iraq's ethnically and religiously mixed northern cities, such as Diyala and Mosul, after military campaigns pushed its militants out of former strongholds in western Anbar province and Baghdad.

An Iraqi boy picks up a blood-soaked cushion from the floor of a barber's shop in a Shia district of Baghdad after it was attacked with a mortar on June 26, 2005. It was not immediately clear how many casualties the attack caused.

An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother to bring over food in Basra on March 29, 2003.

Iraqi teenagers swim in waste water from the nearby Tuweitha nuclear facility near Baghdad on May 28, 2003. Iraqis are consuming contaminated water, unaware of the dangerous pollutants that can cause severe ill health. 

A team member of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division carries a crying Iraqi child out of a house during a pre-dawn raid in the village of Gritz, south of Baquba, on November 11, 2003.

Looking for members of suspected terrorist cells who have attacked coalition forces in the past, US troops raided several houses in the village.

A girl looks at a local resident manning a machinegun at a checkpoint in Baghdad's Adhamiya Sunni neighbourhood on November 12, 2007.

US-Iraqi military forces allowed nearly 300 local residents of Adhamiya district use their weapons to conduct patrols and manage checkpoints, so that they can provide security in their area and help the soldiers fight Al Qaeda insurgents.

A boy sells religious flags to residents, in preparation for the Ashura festival, at a market in Baghdad on January 10, 2008.