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Human Rights Watch: Gli Usa impiegano bombe a grappolo in Iraq

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Da: Human Rights Watch <hrw-news@topica.email-publisher.com>
Risposta: <webadmin@hrw.org>
Data: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 06:30:46 -0700
Oggetto: U.S. Using Cluster Munitions In Iraq

U.S. Using Cluster Munitions In Iraq

(Washington D.C., April 1, 2003) ­ U.S. ground forces in Iraq are using
cluster munitions with a very high failure rate, creating immediate and
long-term dangers for civilians and friendly soldiers, Human Rights
Watch reported today.

While use of the weapon has not yet been confirmed by official U.S.
military sources, it is evident from television images and stories from
reporters embedded with U.S. units that U.S. forces are using artillery
projectiles and rockets containing large numbers of submunitions, or
cluster munitions. When these submunitions fail to explode on impact as
designed, they become hazardous explosive “duds”—functioning like
volatile, indiscriminate antipersonnel landmines.

Two U.S. Marines were killed in separate incidents on March 27 and 28
after stepping on unexploded cluster munitions delivered by artillery in
southern Iraq.

“The United States should not be using these weapons,” said Steve Goose,
executive director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch.  “Iraqi
civilians will be paying the price with their lives and limbs for many
years.”

Human Rights Watch has identified footage of the use of the Multiple
Launch Rocket System (MLRS) by artillery units of the 3rd Infantry
Division. This is a system that currently uses only submunition
payloads. The 1st Battalion of the 39th Field Artillery Regiment of the
division deploys at least eighteen MLRS launch units.

The standard M26 warhead for the MLRS contains 644 M77 individual
submunitions (also called dual-purpose grenades).  According to a
Department of Defense report submitted to the U.S. Congress in February
2000, these submunitions have a failure rate of 16 percent.  Thus, the
typical volley of twelve MLRS rockets would likely result in more than
1,200 dud submunitions scattered randomly in a 120,000 to 240,000 square
meter impact area.

The Washington Post reported on March 29 that the U.S. MLRS fired
eighteen Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) against suspected air
defense sites in support of a helicopter attack by units of the 101st
Airborne Division on March 28.  The payload of an ATACMS is 300 or 950
M74 submunitions with a reported failure rate of two percent.

Human Rights Watch has also seen video of U.S. Marine artillery units
supporting the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion using 155mm
artillery firing projectiles at Iraqi positions; an embedded reporter
described “hundreds of grenades” being fired at the Iraqis. These were
apparently the M483A1 and M864 projectiles whose submunitions
(dual-purpose grenades) have a 14 percent dud rate. The M483A1
projectile contains eighty-eight dual-purpose grenades, and the M864
projectile contains seventy-two dual-purpose grenades.

It is not clear whether air-dropped cluster bombs have been used in the
air campaign. Iraqi officials have repeatedly alleged use of cluster
bombs by U.S. and U.K. aircraft, but these reports have not been
confirmed. U.S. air forces used cluster bombs, notably the CBU-87
Combined Effects Munition, extensively in the first Gulf War in 1991, in
Yugoslavia/Kosovo in 1999 and in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002.

At least eighty U.S. casualties during the 1991 Gulf War were attributed
to cluster munition duds. More than 4,000 civilians were killed or
injured by cluster munition duds after the end of the war.

Human Rights Watch has called for a global moratorium on use of cluster
munitions until the humanitarian problems caused by the weapons are
addressed. Short of that commitment, Human Rights Watch has urged the
United States and others that may deploy cluster munitions in Iraq to
prohibit the use of any cluster munitions in attacks on or near
populated areas and to suspend use of cluster munitions that have been
tested and identified as producing high dud rates. If cluster munitions
are used, it is crucial that the U.S. record, report, track, and mark
known or suspected cluster munition strike areas and preserve the
information so it can be disseminated quickly in clearance efforts.

“The United States must rapidly provide extensive information and
warnings to civilian populations to protect them from cluster munition
duds,” said Goose. “The United States now bears a special responsibility
to help clear these deadly remnants of war as quickly as possible.”

Vast numbers of cluster munition duds will complicate the reconstruction
of Iraq as well as endangering civilians and peacekeepers, Goose said.

Iraq has also extensively used antipersonnel landmines. For more
background on Iraq’s mines and unexploded ordnance, please see
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/iraqmines1212.htm

For more information on War in Iraq, please see:
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/