[A-List] UK military: cluster bomb humanitarians

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

British use of cluster bombs condemned

Weapons make battlefield safer, Hoon says

Richard Norton-Taylor and Owen Bowcott
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian

British and American forces were accused yesterday of breaking international
rules of war after admitting that they were using cluster bombs against
targets in Iraq.

Presented with a storm of criticism, the Ministry of Defence admitted that
Israeli-manufactured cluster shells had been fired by the Royal Artillery's
long-range howitzers around Basra.

It also said that RAF Harrier jets had dropped RBL755 cluster bombs on
targets in Iraq. The weapons, which scatter 147 "bomblets" over a wide area,
have an estimated 10% failure rate, leaving unexploded munitions which
humanitarian groups say are as dangerous as landmines. Yellow in colour and
the size of soft-drink cans, they are attractive to children in particular.

British howitzers with a range of 30km have fired Israeli-made L20 cluster
shells on targets described by the MoD as "in the open". Though they are
designed to self-destruct if they fail to detonate, they contain 49 bomblets
which are lethal over a large area and have a failure rate of up to 5%.

US forces, meanwhile, have been showering batteries of cluster weapons on
Iraqi targets with multi-launch rocket systems.

Iraq's information minister accused US-led forces of dropping cluster bombs
on Baghdad on Thursday, killing 14 people and wounding 66.

"This morning, these criminals dropped cluster bombs on the Douri
residential area of Baghdad, and 14 people - men, women and children - were
martyred and 66 were wounded," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news
conference.

US and British commanders insist they would not drop cluster bombs in places
where there are civilians present.

The chief doctor at the general teaching hospital in Hilla, six miles south
of Baghdad, said this week that 33 civilians had been killed, and 100
injured, after a cluster bomb attack. The US central command in Qatar is
investigating the report.

American military officials said yesterday that US B-52 bombers had for the
first time dropped six new CBU-105 bombs - guided 500kg cluster bombs - on
Iraqi tanks defending Baghdad.

Colin King, author of Jane's explosive ordnance disposal guide and a British
army bomb disposal expert in the 1991 Gulf war, said yesterday: "Cluster
bombs have a very bad reputation, which they deserve."

Richard Lloyd, director of the campaigning group Landmine Action said
yesterday: "Dropping cluster bombs on Iraq contradicts any government claim
to minimise civilian casualties. Cluster weapons are prone to missing their
targets and killing civilians."

Alex Renton, overseeing Oxfam's aid work from Jordan, said the cluster
shells could cause "unnecessary harm". The UN children's fund, Unicef,
expressed concern that Iraqi children might confuse the yellow food packets
being handed out by American forces with the bomblets, which had identical
colouring.

In the Commons, the defence secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, accepted there were
risks with cluster bombs.

He said that though the failure rate was "very small" they did leave a
"continuing problem". Mr Hoon added: "Balanced against that you really have
got to face up to the issue of whether you are going to allow coalition
forces to be put at risk because we do not use this particular capability."

It would be necessary to use "far larger weapons" to deal with the same
problem if cluster bombs were ruled out, he said.

Cluster weapons were used when it was "absolutely justified ... because it
is making the battlefield safer for our armed forces", said Mr Hoon.

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, has said in a written parliamentary
reply that British Challenger 2 tanks in southern Iraq have fired depleted
uranium shells. "The post-conflict administrators of Iraq will be
responsible for monitoring DU levels in the environment and cordoning off
and decontaminating sites of penetrator impacts," he told the Labour MP
Llewellyn Smith.

Human Rights Watch said yesterday that Iraqi forces stored more than 150
landmines in a mosque containing the tombs of Kurdish martyrs in violation
of humanitarian law. The stockpile of abandoned anti-personnel devices was
discovered several days ago in northern Iraq by a team from the Mines
Advisory Group, a British mine removal charity.

Although Iraq is not party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, said Steve Goose,
executive director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, "any use of
anti-personnel mines by any armed force is prohibited by customary
international humanitarian law, since they are inherently indiscriminate
weapons."