Cluster bombs down-played?

2003-05-04 18:26

Washington - The US military may have played down its use of cluster bombs during the war in Iraq, according to the latest issue of Time magazine.

Amid reports last month of heavy casualties, General Richard Myers, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, said that only 26 cluster bombs - weapons which explode to scatter hundreds of smaller bomblets - had landed in civilian areas, resulting in one casualty.

But Myers's claim is hard to reconcile with accounts from hospitals, residents and civil defence officials in Iraqi cities, Time reported, citing civil defence chief for Karbala, Abdul Kareem Mussan who said his men are harvesting about 1 000 cluster bombs a day in places the United States said were not targets.

Chief surgeon at Karbala's al-Hussein hospital, Ali Iziz Ali, told Time that 35 bodies had been brought in since the city fell to US forces on April 6, many of them dismembered by cluster blasts.

Another 50 people had been treated for deep, narrow puncture wounds, typical injuries caused by cluster bomblets.

Time also quotes Steve Goose, executive director of Human Rights Watch's arms division, as saying that the US military has failed to mention the use of cluster bombs fired from ground-based systems.

Multiple rocket launchers used in Iraq can fire 12 cluster bombs at time, each of which has 644 submunitions. Assuming the Pentagon's own failure-rate estimate of 16%, that would yield about 1 200 duds in a full volley, Goose told the magazine.

Time illustrates its claim graphically with the case of a six-year-old Iraqi girl, Duaa Raheem, who found a cluster bomblet and took the object - which looked like a black drinks can and had a white ribbon attached - to show her two sisters.

The device detonated while the three were investigating it, killing Raheem and three-year-old Duha, and severely injuring eight-year-old Saja.

- AFX