Thousands of children are already suffering from diarrhoeal disease - a major killer after the 1991 Gulf War. And now 17 cases of cholera have been confirmed in two hospitals in Iraq's major southern city of Basra.

The World Health Organization warned of a suspected cholera outbreak on Wednesday. WHO experts suspect there may be 10 times the number of cases so far discovered.

"We expect a cholera epidemic in southern Iraq and we fear hundreds of cases," Fadila Shaib, a WHO spokeswoman, told a press conference in Basra.