WASHINGTON: The United
Nations has sounded an alarm over the use of cluster
bombs by American aircraft attacking Afghanistan, saying
eight people died in a Herat village by dozens of
unexploded orange-colored"bomblets" littering
roads and fields.
In this handout picture from the U.S. Navy made available Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2001, U.S. Navy crewmen prepare GBU-99 cluster bombs for transfer from the USS Theodore Roosevelt's hanger bay to the flight deck above the ship during Operation Enduring Freedom on Sunday Oct. 14, 2001. The U.S. Navy did not disclose the location of the ship at sea. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy, Jason Scarborough)
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Official said the
cluster bomb dropped on the Herat village had left a
village strewn with deadly unexploded
"bomblets." The official said eight people from
the village had been killed in the American attack which
leaves people trapped in their homes. UN staff has sought
information from the US military about munitions dropped
at the village of Shaker Qala, and other locations, said
a UN spokesperson. "Vehicles and pushcarts took an
unconfirmed number of casualties ... to the main hospital
in Heart," she said. Cluster bombs are dropped in a
casing which splits open in mid-air, scattering up to 200
bomblets the size of soft drink cans. They are used to
destroy vehicles, to start fires and as an anti-personnel
weapon.
Sometimes they descend
with mini-parachutes designed to prevent explosion on
impact, so that they deny the enemy the use of an area
such as an airfield. Shaker Qala lies near a military
camp. "The villagers have a lot to be afraid of,
because these bomblets, if they did not explode, are very
dangerous," Dan Kelly, manager of a UN mine removal
program for Afghanistan, was quoted as saying by local
media. "They can explode if the villagers so much as
touch them."
The United Nations
report of the cluster bomb - a weapon used by American
forces in every war since Vietnam that has frequently
caused civilian deaths - was the latest of a growing
number of accounts of American bombs going astray and
causing civilian casualties. At the United Nations
briefing where the incident involving the cluster bomb
was disclosed, spokesmen said the Taliban had moved six
tanks into another village outside Herat after an
American bombing raid during the weekend. Afghans
reaching Quetta said two villagers had died when five of
the six tanks were struck in a subsequent American
attack.
A UN official Dan Kelly
was quoted as saying that Afghan employees of the
program in Herat had gone to Shaker Qala, the village
where the cluster bomb hit, to place sandbags around the
bomblets and to clear paths that would allow villagers to
leave their homes. Kelly said the description of the
bomblets given over the radio from Herat suggested that
the bomb appeared to have been of a type designed to
scatter bomblets over an area of 20 football fields.
He said that the
bomblets, carried to the ground on small parachutes,
contained a "shaped charge" capable of
penetrating armored steel up to five inches thick. These
bomblets, he said, are usually used for attacks on
armored vehicles, troop concentrations, bunkers and
other dispersed targets.
But they are deadly even
if they fall to the ground unexploded, because their
small size and bright color make them intriguing to
passers-by, especially children. In more than 20 years of
war, thousands of Afghan children have been killed or
maimed by bomblets left over from Soviet bombing of
guerrilla groups in the 1980's.
Kelly appealed to the
Pentagon to provide the United Nations with details of
the payload, height and speed of the aircraft that
dropped the cluster bomb. That would enable the
mine-removal team to determine the "footprint"
of the bomb and the area to search for the bomblets. With
nearly 300 square miles of Afghanistan already taken up
by uncleared minefields from the 22 years of Soviet
military occupation and civil war, he said, "the
last thing Afghanistan needs right now is more unexploded
mines and bombs."
Since the American raids
began 18 days ago, bombing mistakes have been reported
almost daily. In one early case, a targeting error caused
a bomb to strike a United Nations mine-removal office in
Kabul, killing four Afghan employees. No confirmation of
the two Herat strikes, the one involving the cluster bomb
and the one near the mosque, was immediately available
from the Pentagon, which has acknowledged several
accidental strikes on civilian targets.
Cluster bombs dropped by
US warplanes on a village in western Afghanistan killed
nine civilians and forced the survivors to abandon their
homes, the United Nations said Thursday here in
Islamabad.
UN spokeswoman Stephanie
Bunker told a press conference in Islamabad that eight
people were killed straight away in Monday night's attack
on the village near the city of Herat and a ninth was
killed after picking up one of the bombs. Another 14
people were injured, she said, and 20 of the 45 houses in
the village were partially or completely destroyed.
Bunker said local staff from the UN demining program
had visited the village -- which she identified as Shaker
Qala -- after the attack.
"They reported that
eight civilians were killed directly in the attack and
that one civilian was killed -- as happens in these cases
-- when he went to look at the object, touched it and it
blew up," she said. "They have determined there
were 45 homes in that village, 20 of the homes were
partially or completely destroyed in the attack.
"The rest of the population decided to voluntarily
evacuate and have gone into Herat."
Bunker said the
survivors were only able to leave the village after the
deminers made a path with sandbags for boundaries so the
people fleeing did not touch any of the remaining bombs.
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund said as well
as the immediate deadly impact of the bombs, many of them
did not explode on impact and could kill innocent
civilians years later.
"There's already a
framework of international humanitarian law that is very
clearly defined," Hossain told reporters in
Islamabad. "Whoever is conducting those operations
are under a legal obligation to comply." Hossain
said international law stated maximum care must be taken
to avoid civilian casualties and damage to
non-combatants.
He said the UN would
monitor the US-led forces to ensure their actions
complied with international law. But he would not be
drawn on whether the dropping of cluster bombs on Shaker
Qala or other US air strike blunders that have killed
civilians during the 19-day military campaign had
breached international law.
According to earlier UN
reports, a hospital and mosque in a military compound
within one kilometer (mile) of Shaker Qala were also hit
in the same series of raids. Bunker said Thursday the UN
still stood by its reports, despite the United States
refusing to acknowledge that the village, hospital or
mosque had been hit. She said there were
"casualties" from the attacks on the hospital
and mosque, but was unable to give any more details
.
Copyright 2001 The News International, Pakistan
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