Use of cluster bombs in Iraq criticised

Financial Times, London

Published: May 15 2003

Human rights groups said on Thursday that the widespread use of cluster bombs in Iraq, including in urban centres, had created a humanitarian problem of huge proportions, causing many casualties especially among children and hindering aid and reconstruction efforts.

Stephen Goose of the US-based Human Rights Watch said US and UK forces had acknowledged far wider deployment of cluster bombs than in Afghanistan where the US military air-dropped some 1,200 sub-munitions.

UK forces had admitted using 600 air-dropped bombs and 2,100 launched from surface systems, Mr Goose said. The US had air-dropped 1,500 cluster bombs, but had refused to release a tally for ground-launched weapons, which were likely to have been far more numerous.

Human Rights Watch said it had documented use of cluster bombs in heavily populated areas, including the cities of Baghdad, Nasiriya and Basra. "This dramatically escalates the danger and the horrific impact cluster munitions have, and is highly likely to cause excessive civilian casualties", Mr Goose said.

Human Rights Watch and other groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, have called for a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs, and many legal experts believe their use in urban areas violates international humanitarian law which requires combatants to take every precaution to avoid civilian casualties.

Each cluster bomb releases 200-300 bomblets scattered over a wide area, of which between 5 and 30 per cent fail to explode, posing a permanent hazard to civilians once the conflict is over. If accidentally detonated these bomblets, which are designed to pierce armour, can kill people within a radius of 150 metres, making them far more destructive than anti-personnel landmines which are already outlawed by the Ottawa convention.

Mr Goose said the coalition forces had not used landmines in the Iraq campaign but Iraq had done so in "a particularly dastardly way" that put civilians at risk. Even before the war, Iraq was one of the most heavily-mined countries in the world.

Though there are no reliable figures on post-war casualties from unexploded ordnance in Iraq, humanitarian groups say anecdotal reports suggest hundreds of civilians may have been killed or injured in recent weeks.