Reuters AlertNet Lite - FACTBOX-Cluster bombs exact deadly toll for years

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FACTBOX-Cluster bombs exact deadly toll for years

25 May 2007 23:07:10 GMT
Source: Reuters

May 25 (Reuters) - Nearly 70 countries meeting in Peru's capital Lima pledged their support on Friday for a declaration calling for cluster bombs to be banned.

Following are some key facts about cluster bombs.

CLUSTER BOMBS AND THEIR DANGERS

- Cluster bombs are munitions that disperse into bomblets, and are scattered over hundreds of square yards. Many bomblets fail to detonate, effectively becoming land mines that can maim and kill years after they were dropped.

WHEN AND WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN USED?

- The Soviet Union first used cluster bombs against German Nazi troops in 1943, according to campaign group Human Rights Watch. In the same year, the German air force dropped cluster munitions on eastern England.

- The U.S. Air Force used cluster bombs intensively during the Vietnam War, pounding Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam with some 67,000 munitions. Many of the bomblets remain unexploded more than 30 years after the end of the conflict.

- Cluster bombs have also been used in Afghanistan, the Falkland Islands, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Lebanon.

HOW MANY ARE THERE?

- The global stockpile is estimated at some 4 billion munitions, with around a quarter in U.S. hands. There are no figures for the total number of bomblets that lie dormant.

DEADLY LEGACY

- Civilians, a quarter of them children, make up almost all the victims of cluster bombs over the last three decades, according to humanitarian agency Handicap International. The weapons have killed or maimed more than 11,000 people, it says.

- According to organizers of the Lima conference, Laos is littered with tens of millions of unexploded bomblets -- more than any other country.

RECENT USE

- The most recent widespread use of cluster bombs was by Israel during its five-week war against Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon in 2006. Up to a million unexploded bomblets are thought to be in the area.

LEGAL STATUS

- Thirty-four countries produce or have produced cluster bombs, and 75 stockpile them.

- Forty-six countries pledged their support in Norway in February for an international ban in 2008 and were joined by 28 others in Lima.

- Belgium is the only country to have banned the production and use of cluster bombs and has made it a crime to invest in companies that make these weapons.

Sources: Reuters; Cluster Munition Coalition (www.stopclustermunitions.org), Handicap International, Human Rights Watch.

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Last updated:Fri May 25 23:08:44 2007