Cluster bombs continue to kill after ceasefire

[M.Dancer]

How much effort do you suspose it takes to find and safely remove 100,000 bomblets? And in the meantime, there is only one choice. Don't harvest what sparse resources there are and risk death, or slowly starve.

Now tell me, how many unexploded katyushas are there scattered around Israel?

Since you are so good at mking up numbers out of thin air, why not answer your own question?

But, I will go with orange.

[M.Dancer]

If Hezbollah had actually being doing something as dangerous as spreading cluster munitions all over northern Israel, there probably wouldn't be any Lebanon left at this point.

I fail to see your logic. Given that Hezbollah's charm is their willingness to bash the heads of babies on rocks, are you suggesting that if they had access to deadlier weapons they wouldn't use them on children...or that their innocence lies in that they only had WWII vintage indirect fire rockets to target civilians?

[Chuck U. Farlie]

Perhaps the Lebonese civillians shouldn't have allowed Hezbollah soldiers to use them as shields and to draw the fire into their homes.

The Hezbollah don't operate as a regular army. They don't have bases and barracks. Any of those 'civillian' houses in 'civillian' areas could be doubling as a Hezbollah barracks / weapon bunkers / intelligence headquaters, etc.. When you are engaged in a war, you have to fight your enemy.

[M.Dancer]

According to an article I am reading now, 83 people have been killed by cluster submunitions since the ceasefire took affect.

The use of cluster munitions was not self-defense. They were used by the IDF *only* in the three days leading up to the ceasefire. Thus, they intentional used weapons so that Lebanese would be suffering from them for a long time to come.

If there was only one thing the IDF did during the conflict that could not be justified, this would be it.

According to an article *I* am reading now.....15 people have been killed since the cease fire.....

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/19/...uster_Bombs.php

And according to another article, 90% of the munition were used in the first 3 days.

The UN has found that Israel dropped 90 percent of all the cluster bombs it used in Lebanon in the three days immediately preceding the ceasefire.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060913/wl_mi...ns_060913143214

[M.Dancer]

Also, you bring up World War II.

Not sure if you are talking to me....but I didn't bring up WWII.

[Remiel]

Wikipedia:

" Given that each cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets and are fired in volleys, even a small failure rate can lead each strike to leave behind hundreds or thousands of UXOs scattered randomly across the strike area. For example, after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, UN experts have estimated that as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets may contaminate the hundreds of cluster munition strike sites[4].

In addition, some cluster bomblets, such as the CBU-87, are brightly coloured in order to increase their visibility and warn off civilians. However, the colour, coupled with their small and unthreatening appearance has caused children to interpret them as toys. This problem was exacerbated in the United States military action against Afghanistan, when US forces dropped humanitarian rations dropped from airplanes with the same yellow colored packaging as the BLU97. The rations packaging was later changed first to blue and then to clear packaging in the hopes of avoiding such hazardous confusion. "

" Once the Technicians determine exactly what the munition or device is, and what state it currently is in, they will formulate a procedure to render it safe. This may include things as simple as replacing safety features, or as difficult as using high-powered explosive-actuated devices to shear, jam, bind, or remove parts of the item's firing train.

Preferably, this will be accomplished remotely, but there are still circumstances when a robot won't do, and a Technician must put themself at risk by personally going near the bomb. The Technician will don a specialized suit, using flame and fragmentation-resistant material similar to bulletproof vests. Some suits have advanced features such as internal cooling, amplified hearing, and communications back to the control area. This suit is designed to increase the odds of survival for the Technician should the munition or IED function while they are near it.

Rarely, the specifics of a munition or bomb will allow the Technician to first remove it from the area. In these cases, a containment vessel is used. Some are shaped like small water tanks, others like large spheres. Using remote methods, the Technician places the item in the container and retires to a uninhabited area to complete the neutralization. Because of the instability and complexity of modern bombs, this is rarely done.

After the munition or bomb has been rendered safe, the Technicians will assist in the removal of the remaining parts so the area can be returned to normal.

All of this, called a mission or evolution, can take a great deal of time. Because of the construction of devices, a waiting period must be taken to ensure that whatever render-safe method was used worked as intended. While time is usually not on the Bomb Technician's side, rushing usually ends in disaster. "

" Civilian deaths from unexploded cluster bomblets

In Lebanon, over 50 civilians, including 13 children, have been killed or injured by unexploded bomblets since the August 14, 2006 ceasefire in the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon conflict. [1]

In post-war Kosovo unexploded cluster bomblets caused more civilian deaths than landmines. [2].

In Vietnam, people are still being killed as a result of cluster bombs and other objects left by the US military. Estimates range up to 300 per year [3]

In August 2006, the UN's Mine Action Coordination Center in Tyre, Lebanon, raised an alarm over the post-conflict impact on returning civilians of unexploded cluster bombs used by Israel in village areas [4]. According to spokespersons:

"What's shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end" [5]

"A lot of them are in civilian areas, on farmland and in people's homes ... We're finding a lot at the entrances to houses, on balconies and roofs. ... Most of them are from America" [6]

The US State Department has launched an inquiry into Israeli use of US-made cluster bombs during the conflict [7]. Up to 90% of the total number of cluster bombs have been dropped by Israel over Lebannon in the last 72 hours of the conflict. During this period, Israel was also under heavy fire from Hezbollah rockets. As many as 70% of the bomblets dropped may not have detonated [8]. "

UK Guardian:

" Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer's 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes. "

" We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse," said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.

Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. "We're finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere," Mr Clark said. "

Haartez:

(from September 9th)

" IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon

By Meron Rappaport

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) platforms were heavily used in spite of the fact that they were known to be highly inaccurate.

MLRS is a track or tire carried mobile rocket launching platform, capable of firing a very high volume of mostly unguided munitions. The basic rocket fired by the platform is unguided and imprecise, with a range of about 32 kilometers. The rockets are designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds.

The use of such weaponry is controversial mainly due to its inaccuracy and ability to wreak great havoc against indeterminate targets over large areas of territory, with a margin of error of as much as 1,200 meters from the intended target to the area hit.

The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.

Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.

According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.

When his reserve duty came to a close, the commander in question sent a letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz outlining the use of cluster munitions, a letter which has remained unanswered.

'Excessive injury and unnecessary suffering'

It has come to light that IDF soldiers fired phosphorous rounds in order to cause fires in Lebanon. An artillery commander has admitted to seeing trucks loaded with phosphorous rounds on their way to artillery crews in the north of Israel.

A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death.

International law forbids the use of weapons that cause "excessive injury and unnecessary suffering", and many experts are of the opinion that phosphorous rounds fall directly in that category.

The International Red Cross has determined that international law forbids the use of phosphorous and other types of flammable rounds against personnel, both civilian and military. "

[Remiel]

Maybe you should pay a little more attention to what you are posting, M.Dancer. You say that 90% were fired in the first three days, but it was 90% in the LAST three days. You say it was day 1, 2 and 3, but it was day 32, 33 and 34.

" The UN has found that Israel dropped 90 percent of all the cluster bombs it used in Lebanon in the three days immediately preceding the ceasefire. "

And the www.iht.com article makes no mention of casualties.

And from from own Yahoo article:

" In the first 15 days after the August 14 ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, 52 Lebanese civilians were killed by unexploded cluster bombs, according to the United Nations. "

15 days, not 15 people.

[M.Dancer]

Maybe you should pay a little more attention to what you are posting...........

And the www.iht.com article makes no mention of casualties.

Yeah, what ever......

At least 15 people, including a child, have been killed by cluster bombs in the month since the Aug. 14 cease-fire, the U.N. said Tuesday. Another 83 have been wounded.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/19/...uster_Bombs.php

Maybe you should pay a little more attention to what you are posting, M.Dancer. You say that 90% were fired in the first three days, but it was 90% in the LAST three days. You say it was day 1, 2 and 3, but it was day 32, 33 and 34.

My mistake.

[Remiel]

I see that I missed the next page function of your article.

That being said, your article states that in a month, they have only cleared 17,000 bomblets, probably only the most obvious ones too.

In my article, the IDF command quotes approximately 30-40% failure rate of sub-munitions and 1.2 million bomblets. That would suggest that 100,000 could be extremely conservative.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find an article on the actual UN website that states numbers of deaths.

Another web page I see also states the 15 deaths, 83 injuries, so I will concede that I may have misread that in the original article. Still, that is one person every two days dead, and major clean up could take up to 30 months, according to this same article. Even if one assumes the numbers to decrease as time goes on, that could eventually mean many more people killed by cluster munitions than the actual fighting. Also, while I think the children angle is sometimes pushed too much, I think that in this case it is valid. Children do not recognize the danger like adults do.

As a side note, there is one kind of cluster bomb, the BLU-114/B " Soft Bomb " that possibly could of avoided the oil spill in the Mediterranean had they been able to use them. Since the US makes these, and they supply virtually all of Israels weapons, they should of been able to use some. They are quite expensive, but they use specially treated carbon fibres to fry electrical equipment, which could of avoided the much, much, much more costly oil spill. They also apparently have a very limited chance of inflicting casualties. Would of been nice if they had at least tried one of them out before using conventional weapon on the power plant. Similar weapons were apparently used in the Gulf War and Kosovo, knocking out 85% and 70% of the respectives countries electrical generation in one go. And they can be later cleaned up and the equipment repaired, so they are effective at denying your enemy in the short term while being of much lesser consequence in the long term, after hostilities have ceased.