"My dreams are nightmarish...because I always dream of warplanes bombing my house and killing dad and mam!" said Fatima, an eight-year schoolgirl.

According to a latest study, whose findings were published in local Iraqi media recently, most Iraqi children used to draw tanks and warplane.

When Mustafa, a 12-year-old boy, was asked why he drew tanks with Iraqi flag and not trees, he said "soon after I began to sense the outside world, I used to see tanks on TV more than anything else."

Asked about now, Mustafa said, "I see more US tanks, but no Iraqi ones."

Psychiatrist Abdul Majeed believed that Iraqi children needed many years to free themselves from the agony of wars and violence and help them forget all about the bitter experience of their country in the past two decades.

Dr. Abdul Majeed added "however the current troubled situation in Iraq is unhelpful to raise normal kids!!"

Meanwhile, the UN figures indicate that almost 25 percent of Iraqi students have left their classes to help their families make a living.

A visitor of the Iraqi capital nowadays could see thousands of underage children selling cigarettes, or dealing in black market, or doing some jobs at a time when the per capita of most Iraqis has dropped to US$360 nowadays from US$2,500 per annum in 1989, the last year before UN sanctions.

The three successive wars experienced by Iraq left hundreds of thousands of orphan children and divided families, with street children who are often exposed to sexual abuse.

Iraqi children, due to the troubled situation in their country in the past two decades are considered among the most agonized children in the world.

In the past two decades, Iraqis experienced three wars and 13 years of harsh UN sanctions which took a heavy toll from these children, who have been denied even the opportunity to dream of a bright future.

According to UN figures more than half a million Iraqi children under 5 had died between 1990 and 2000 as a result of malnutrition or shortage of medicine.

Iraq was subjected to UN sanctions in punishment for invading oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990 by order of its former President Saddam Hussein.

Saddam, who was captured last month, had been ousted from power by US-led coalition forces last April.

The use of depleted Uranium Ammunition against Iraq in 1991 US- led war, which resulted in the eviction of Iraqi army from Kuwait, had resulted in the birth of thousands of children with congenital deformations.

The fear of giving birth to such deformed children made thousands of newly-married Iraqi women refuse pregnancy.

The sound of explosions during the three wars experienced by Iraq in the past two decades spread horror among Iraqi children.

Dr. Abdul Majeed said "Iraqi children have the right, like any other normal children in the world, to dream of a better future."

The only thing remains to be seen, he added, "is when this will come true."