International Cluster-bombs killing still in Lebanon

Press, 10 April 1978, Page 8

International Cluster-bombs killing still in Lebanon

NZPA-Reuter

Nabatieh, Lebanon

Of all the weapons Israel used in its March 15 invasion of southern Lebanon, it was the American-made cluster bomb that caused the most rage and anguish. Some are still doing their lethal work, weeks after the bombers went away.

Evidence that Israeli dropped these bombs, actual- i h canisters filled with hun-;' dreds of individual bomblets, I can be readily seen at coast-!I a! refugee camps, inland farms, and hillside villages ; throughout the soum. 'These are not good; bombs," said Mr Sselim Sha-raf-Eddin, a 60-year-oMj. farmer in Kfar Tibnit, withd purposeful understatement: as he showed visitors the holes in his ceiling, the 1 small craters in his fields,;; and tell-tale bomb casings. ' "Thanks be to God, none ( nt mv family were hurt,";' the father of seven exclaimed. He said the bombs;' fell on the night of March ' 16, the secund day of the inHe pulled two tin cans 1 from behind his garden wall and gingerly took from them I a handful of dirt-covered,; metal spheres, each the size of a lemon and weighing.' about a pound. “These didn't go off," he explained as his guests backed away from' him. "These villagers don’t' understand." said Mr Abu ' Kadri. a Palestinian guerrilla ; fn the nearby town of Ar-1' noun. '‘tgjmeof these things;! have delayed fuses and can i go off later, weeks later, if. thex are just nudged." < He pointed to the carcash of a dog in a tobacco field.lt Its head was blown off. The'; guerrillas had placed little i

: circles of stones around-] unexploded bomblets as a i warning to children and field hands, but the dog had i ;been curious. On-the-spot inspections] i show that cluster-bombs'l were dropped during the;; 1 first week of the Israeli in-1 vasion on areas from the, (Mediterranean coast to the; foothills of Mount Hermon. I The distinctive two-metre]' canister with fins and theil olive-coloured bomblets are] still seen around the Rash-1-idieh, boss, and Bourg el i Chemali refugee camps riear'l Tyre, in fields around thisil guerrilla-occupied market; town, and in hamlets of south-eastern Lebanon. These are areas still con-i| troiied by Palestinians on] the western coast and north! of the Litani River. Beirut-1, based correspondents are not] allowed into Israeli-held ter-! ritory, some 1295 sq. km] (south of the Litani. “Our men are still comb-; ing the beach areas in and around the three (refugee)! camps and coming up with; scores of unexploded cluster; shells,” Mr Mahmoud La-|l badi, a spokesman for Mr] Yasser Arafat's Palestine'' Liberation Organisation, said 11 in Beirut. Mr Labadi claimed that! dozens of families caught inli the camps during the air: raids had been killed by the r ;cluster-bombs, in addition to! the conventional one-ex-1

plosion bombs, but there is no independent estimate of how many casualties; resulted. It is not possible to deter-; I mine if the anti-personnel I bombs were targeted fori jguerrilla positions, but many] landed on civilian areas like, I Mr Sharaf-Eddins’s farm. A; Palestinian base in a farm-1 I house several hundred I meters up the street was unitouched. Guerrillas and Lebanese ivillagers interviewed yester!dav said there appeared to be two kinds of cluster- | bombs, one that exploded on I impact and another that exploded later when moved. But some said the unexiploded bomblets may have ' just malfunctioned as con- ! ventional bombs sometimes |do. After a cluster-bomb is 'dropped, the casing splits in an explosive flash before hitting the ground, and rains (down hundreds oif the fistsized bomblets over an area • of about 200 metres in diameter. Each bomblet consists of a (hollow, brass-coloured sphere I filled with T.N.T. and covered by a thin steel casing (that is ridged to make it spin. The interior of the ex-plosive-filled ball is deeply (cut into a grid that becomes 'more than 200 diamondi shaped pieces of shrapnel 'when the bomb explodes. I The cluster-bomb was first;

used by the Americans in Vietnam, causing an uproar at the time among anti-war protesters.

The lettering on one of the bomb canisters examined on Saturday indicated that the United States delivered ;the bomb to Israel more 'than four years ago. It said: 'Loading date: 7-73; loading activity: M.A.A.P.

The initials, one Western source has said, shovys that the shell was supplied by the United States Military Assistance and Advisory Programme.