"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.See also here. The US uses cluster bombs in Iraq (and here), supplied them to Israel (and here), and has also used and perhaps still uses phosphorous shells.
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 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...
A direct hit from a phosphorous shell typically causes severe burns and a slow, painful death.
On cluster bombs, see here, here, and here.
Don't you think we're looking at war crimes trials for Americans and Israelis now to add to the ignominy?
[Via The War in Context].
3 comments:
The moral high ground must be victim number two, right after the truth.
Next year in The Hague!
We can only hope....
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