BOMBLET NUMBER CHANGES
The BBC, 30 August:
UN clearance experts had so far found 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites, Jan Egeland said.The BBC, 26 September:
Up to a million cluster bomblets discharged by Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah remain unexploded in southern Lebanon, the UN has said.It would be more convincing if a general breakdown of the source of these bomblets – MLRS, artillery and aerial bombs – was provided. I mean if experts know that about 40% of the bombs failed to explode they must know how they were delivered (the 155-mm M395 delivers 63 bomblets, the MLRS M77 carries 644 with the largest aerial bombs carrying around 2,000). That way we'd know how realistic are the unexploded bomblet estimates.
The UN's mine disposal agency says about 40% of the cluster bombs fired or dropped by Israel failed to detonate - three times the UN's previous estimate.
posted by Anonymous at 7:10 PM |
1 Comments:
I agree that the reporting (including UN claims)on this has been suspect from the start. (How did they know, for example, that most of the cluster bombs came in the last couple of days of fighting. It seemed to me doubtful that the UN people on the ground would have been able to tell with such precision.)
That said, it would seem that the tactic of using them might have been designed to make re-occupation dangerous and slow. If that is correct, I would have mixed feelings about it, given the inevitable civilian toll that it will have.
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