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.

A mother of seven, Von der Leyen said that 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."

She said that the daily Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper that she wanted to build a dam against the flood of pictures by blocking access for the users. However, the proposal would require a change to German media law, but she was confident that there was a willingness to do this across the political spectrum.

In her view the amount of child pornography on the Web was spiraling out of control. The numbers are exploding and the distribution of such pictures doubled last year, with one in three victims under the age of three.