Germany's family minister Ursula von der Leyen, seen here in Hanover in 2007, announced plans to crack down on Internet child pornography by enlisting online service providers to block offensive sites, in an interview published Thursday.

Germany's family minister Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to crack down on Internet child pornography by enlisting online service providers to block offensive sites, in an interview published Thursday.

Von der Leyen, herself a mother of seven, said the Federal Crime Office has compiled a list of some 1,000 sites posting images of children being sexually abused and that it was up to Web firms to pull the plug "immediately".

"I want to build a dam against the flood of pictures by blocking access for the users," she told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.

The minister, from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, said her proposal would require a change to German media law.

"There is a willingness to do this across the political spectrum" she said.

Von der Leyen said the amount of child pornography on the web was spiralling out of control.

"The numbers are exploding -- the distribution of such pictures doubled last year," she said, with one in three victims under the age of three.

"Children's souls and bodies are being torn apart by brutal rapes."

© 2008 AFP