orangikan
08-25-2006, 10:38 AM
The gift that keeps on giving!
Thursday 24 August 2006, 9:03 Makka Time, 6:03 GMT
Unexploded Israeli cluster bombs, some dating back to the Vietnam war era, are exacting an increasing toll on Lebanese civilians returning home, the UN and human rights groups say.
Figures from the Lebanese military show that eight people, including several children, have been killed and a further 38 wounded by cluster bomb explosions since the start of a ceasefire on August 14 to end a month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
On Wednesday, three Lebanese bomb disposal specialists were killed by a cluster bomb in the village of Tebnin, some 15km from the Israeli border.
Dalya Farran of the UN Mine Action co-ordination centre in south Lebanon declared it an "emergency situation".
Hundreds of Israeli artillery shells containing nearly 200 explosive rounds each were fired into southern Lebanon during the fighting, landing in villages and towns dozens of kilometres beyond the border.
Each time a shell lands, hundreds of bomblets burst from it, creating a huge area ridden with dangerous shrapnel.
"The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973"
But the UN estimates that a dangerously high percentage of these failed to explode, leaving their targets strewn with potential death traps.
Farran said that according to the most recent data, 185 cluster bomb strikes have been found so far by assessment teams who have the additional pressure of displaced people seeking to return to their stricken villages.
"Not all of these, a majority maybe, failed to go off," Farran said.
She said those intact bomblets are hard to find amid the rubble, and when they are spotted, "people assume that because of their small size that they are harmless".
Vietnam-era stock
The result, according to a military analyst with Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco, are "minefields in peoples' homes".
"The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973," Garlasco said following a week-long tour through the south where "whole villages have been contaminated" by bombs.
"There are kids playing with them and getting hurt, killed."
In a fact sheet issued earlier in the week, the UN urged parents to be especially vigilant for unexploded ordnance.
As part of a large public education campaign, the Lebanese army has dropped 100,000 leaflets and distributed 10,000 posters at checkpoints, and radio and television channels have aired warnings against the dangers of unexploded munitions.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4FA4A2BE-2A7D-479E-A480-95E8E9F0D095.htm
The friend that cannot do wrong!
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The State Department is investigating whether Israel’s use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons, two officials said.
The investigation by the department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.
The report said American munitions found included 559 M-42’s, an anti-personnel bomblet used in 105-millimeter artillery shells; 663 M-77’s, a submunition found in M-26 rockets; and 5 BLU-63’s, a bomblet found in the CBU-26 cluster bomb. Also found were 608 M-85’s, an Israeli-made submunition.
Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel’s military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.
Even if Israel is found to have violated the classified agreement covering cluster bombs, it is not clear what actions the United States might take.
In 1982, delivery of cluster-bomb shells to Israel was suspended a month after Israel invaded Lebanon after the Reagan administration determined that Israel “may” have used them against civilian areas.
But the decision to impose what amounted to a indefinite moratorium was made under pressure from Congress, which conducted a long investigation of the issue. Israel and the United States reaffirmed restrictions on the use of cluster munitions in 1988, and the Reagan administration lifted the moratorium.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/middleeast/25cluster.
Thursday 24 August 2006, 9:03 Makka Time, 6:03 GMT
Unexploded Israeli cluster bombs, some dating back to the Vietnam war era, are exacting an increasing toll on Lebanese civilians returning home, the UN and human rights groups say.
Figures from the Lebanese military show that eight people, including several children, have been killed and a further 38 wounded by cluster bomb explosions since the start of a ceasefire on August 14 to end a month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
On Wednesday, three Lebanese bomb disposal specialists were killed by a cluster bomb in the village of Tebnin, some 15km from the Israeli border.
Dalya Farran of the UN Mine Action co-ordination centre in south Lebanon declared it an "emergency situation".
Hundreds of Israeli artillery shells containing nearly 200 explosive rounds each were fired into southern Lebanon during the fighting, landing in villages and towns dozens of kilometres beyond the border.
Each time a shell lands, hundreds of bomblets burst from it, creating a huge area ridden with dangerous shrapnel.
"The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973"
But the UN estimates that a dangerously high percentage of these failed to explode, leaving their targets strewn with potential death traps.
Farran said that according to the most recent data, 185 cluster bomb strikes have been found so far by assessment teams who have the additional pressure of displaced people seeking to return to their stricken villages.
"Not all of these, a majority maybe, failed to go off," Farran said.
She said those intact bomblets are hard to find amid the rubble, and when they are spotted, "people assume that because of their small size that they are harmless".
Vietnam-era stock
The result, according to a military analyst with Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco, are "minefields in peoples' homes".
"The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973," Garlasco said following a week-long tour through the south where "whole villages have been contaminated" by bombs.
"There are kids playing with them and getting hurt, killed."
In a fact sheet issued earlier in the week, the UN urged parents to be especially vigilant for unexploded ordnance.
As part of a large public education campaign, the Lebanese army has dropped 100,000 leaflets and distributed 10,000 posters at checkpoints, and radio and television channels have aired warnings against the dangers of unexploded munitions.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4FA4A2BE-2A7D-479E-A480-95E8E9F0D095.htm
The friend that cannot do wrong!
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The State Department is investigating whether Israel’s use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons, two officials said.
The investigation by the department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.
The report said American munitions found included 559 M-42’s, an anti-personnel bomblet used in 105-millimeter artillery shells; 663 M-77’s, a submunition found in M-26 rockets; and 5 BLU-63’s, a bomblet found in the CBU-26 cluster bomb. Also found were 608 M-85’s, an Israeli-made submunition.
Several current and former officials said that they doubted the investigation would lead to sanctions against Israel but that the decision to proceed with it might be intended to help the Bush administration ease criticism from Arab governments and commentators over its support of Israel’s military operations. The investigation has not been publicly announced; the State Department confirmed it in response to questions.
Even if Israel is found to have violated the classified agreement covering cluster bombs, it is not clear what actions the United States might take.
In 1982, delivery of cluster-bomb shells to Israel was suspended a month after Israel invaded Lebanon after the Reagan administration determined that Israel “may” have used them against civilian areas.
But the decision to impose what amounted to a indefinite moratorium was made under pressure from Congress, which conducted a long investigation of the issue. Israel and the United States reaffirmed restrictions on the use of cluster munitions in 1988, and the Reagan administration lifted the moratorium.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/middleeast/25cluster.