Israel using cluster munitions in Lebanon: rights group

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/ts_alt_afp/mideastconflictlebanon_060724205820

NEW YORK (AFP) - Human Rights Watch said that Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in Lebanon, killing a civilian, and called on the Jewish state to immediately cease the practice.

The New York-based rights group said researchers on the ground in Lebanon confirmed that Israel staged a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19, leaving one person dead and injuring 12 civilians, including seven children.

The report said researchers had also photographed cluster munitions in the arsenal of Israeli artillery teams stationed at the Lebanese border.

"Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," Kenneth Roth, executive directory of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "They should never be used in populated areas."

Researchers interviewed witnesses of the Blida attack who said Israelis had fired shells which dropped hundreds of cluster munitions on the village.

[rzemanfl]

1. And Shrub running a clusterfuck back here, great World. No? n/t

[Poll_Blind]

2. Unreal. Turning all of Lebanon into a giant minefield. n/t

PB

[panader0]

3. Surgical strikes my ass! Those weapons are for people.

[Fredda Weinberg]

4. That's why the US uses 'em

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/arms/cluster031803.htm

[tnlefty]

6. And many of us expressed outrage and anger when they were being

used in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Israel is held to a different standard than Bush or Rumsfeld

Pallets of 155mm artillery projectiles including DPICM cluster munitions (center and right with yellow diamonds) in the arsenal of an IDF artillery unit on July 23 in northern Israel. Each DPICM shell contains 88 sub-munitions, which have a dud rate of up to 14 percent. © Human Rights Watch 2006



Close-up of a M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered cluster munition present in the arsenal of an IDF unit in northern Israel. © Human Rights Watch 2006

The M483A1 artillery shells deliver 88 cluster submunitions per shell, and have an unacceptably high failure rate (dud rate) of 14 percent, leaving behind a serious unexploded ordnance problem that will further endanger civilians. The commander said that the IDF’s operations manual warns soldiers that the use of such cluster munitions creates dangerous minefields due to the high dud rate.

Lebanese security forces, who to date have not engaged in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, also accused Israel of using cluster munitions in its attacks on Blida and other Lebanese border villages. These sources also indicated they have evidence that Israel used cluster munitions earlier this year during fighting with Hezbollah around the contested Shebaa Farms area. Human Rights Watch is continuing to investigate these additional allegations.

Human Rights Watch believes that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. The wide dispersal pattern of their submunitions makes it very difficult to avoid civilian casualties if civilians are in the area. Moreover, because of their high failure rate, cluster munitions leave large numbers of hazardous, explosive duds that injure and kill civilians even after the attack is over. Human Rights Watch believes that cluster munitions should never be used, even away from civilians, unless their dud rate is less than 1 percent.

Human Rights Watch conducted detailed analyses of the U.S. military’s use of cluster bombs in the 1999 Yugoslavia war, the 2001-2002 Afghanistan war, and the 2003 Iraq war. Human Rights Watch research established that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition’s conduct of major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians. Roughly a quarter of the 500 civilian deaths caused by NATO bombing in the 1999 Yugoslavia war were also due to cluster munitions.

“Our research in Iraq and Kosovo shows that cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life,” Roth said. “Israel must stop using cluster bombs in Lebanon at once.”

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/24/isrlpa13798.htm

[Fredda Weinberg]

13. Why? eom

[Ms. Clio]

7. non, meet sequitur

[leftchick]

10. yes

indeed

[AlamoDemoc]

5. check this out....

http://www.netwerkvlaanderen.be/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=28&Itemid=59&limit=5&limitstart=5

[MrPrax]

8. Was it autographed?

An Explosive Image in Lebanon Conflict



Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy
artillery position near Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.


This photograph of Israeli children writing on artillery shells bound for targets in Lebanon has caused outrage among many bloggers, not least those from the Arab world.

The debate about the image has, of course, become part of the propaganda war that is running alongside the conflict.

"From the children of Israel, to the children of Lebanon, with love," writes one Greek blogger, Mavrosgatos, showing the image above a very graphic photograph apparently showing the scorched corpse of a Lebanese child. "These children are raised with hatred instead of milk," the blogger writes.

Another blog similarly shows another child victim, a little girl, lying dead in southern Lebanon.

Guardian

[lumpy]

9. Children targeting children.

More than smarmy.

[AlamoDemoc]

11. That picture is truly sick.....Children should never be hatemongers