The 'Toys' That Kill in Lebanon (Cluster Bombs)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1585565,00.html

To 17-year-old Rasha Zayoun, the small metal canister with a ribbon attached to the top looked like a toy. Her father, Mohammed, had found it while harvesting wild thyme in a field near her house in the southern Lebanese village of Marakeh, and had taken it home in his bag of herbs.

One evening four weeks ago, Rasha picked up the strange object and played with the ribbon, wondering what it was. "Then I felt a tingle of electricity," she says. "I threw it from me and it exploded before it hit the floor."

The blast tore off her left leg and wounded her mother, Alia, and brother Qassem, 21, who were in the room at the time. The "toy" was a cluster bomblet, just one of the estimated 1 million unexploded sub-munitions scattered across the valleys and hills of south Lebanon during last summer's war between Israel and Hizballah. Cluster bombs — an anti-personnel and anti-armor weapon that disperses dozens or hundreds of grenade-sized bomblets across a wide area — have killed at least 30 people and wounded over 180 according to U.N. figures since the Aug. 14 ceasefire ended the month-long conflict.

Last week, the U.S. State Department announced that a preliminary investigation had concluded that Israel may have breached agreements with Washington on the use of U.S.-supplied cluster munitions during the Lebanon war. "The Department takes very seriously its responsibility to ensure that U.S.- provided weapons are used for purposes authorized under U.S. law," said an official of the State Department. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act restricts the use of U.S.-made weaponry to "internal security" and "legitimate self-defense," which Israel would certainly claim were the purpose of its actions against Hizballah. But more precise "end-use restrictions" are contained in U.S.-Israel contracts, according to a State Department official, although the wording is classified. These restrictions are believed to require that Israel refrain from endangering civilians in its use of the munitions. Human rights groups have accused both Israel and Hizballah of committing war crimes through indiscriminate targeting of civilian areas during the war. If the State Department's preliminary finding is confirmed, it could pressure the White House to censure Israel, possibly through a freeze on cluster bomb exports to the Jewish State.

Article also mentions the high dud rate was because these bomblets were from early 70's and well beyond their shelf life.