UN: Israel's use of cluster bombs 'immoral'

The United Nations Secretary General has added his voice to growing concern over the devastating impact on civilians of cluster bombs used by Israel in its recent military offensive in Lebanon. Speaking on a visit to Jordan on Aug. 31, UN chief Kofi Annan said, "Those kinds of weapons shouldn't be used in civilian and populated areas." On Aug. 30, Jan Egeland, the UN's chief humanitarian official, condemned Israel's use of cluster bombs. "What's shocking and I would say, to me, 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 really knew there would be an end of this," Egeland said. The UN Humanitarian Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that up to 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets are scattered in southern Lebanon. "Even if there is only one mine in the field, it is the kind of weapon that long after the conflict lies there silently waiting to maim and kill," said Annan. The presence of unexploded ordnance is proving to be a major impediment to the safe return of thousands of displaced people. "The people returning home, however, are facing massive problems," said Egeland. "Two hundred and fifty thousand of them, in our view, are not able to move into their homes at all because they are destroyed or because of unexploded ordnance." Cluster bombs, or submunitions, are small metallic canisters. Typically, tens to hundreds of these bomblets are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that kill anyone within 10 yards of where they land. Up to a twenty-five percent, however, fail to explode. In Lebanon, many of these bomblets landed on main roads, greatly affecting civilian access to public services such as hospitals. "Many have also fallen into the fields and plantations, thus impeding access to the fields, which once constituted a main source of livelihood for many people in the south," said Astrid Van Genderen Stort, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "Even those villages that have not suffered massive damages to houses and infrastructure have been affected, because people cannot go into the fields and tend to their crops," she added.