What are cluster munitions?
Cluster munitions—also known as cluster bombs, weapons, or munitions—open in mid-air and spew hundreds of small (can-sized) bomblets over a wide area. Each of these small bomblets, or sub-munitions, is then supposed to detonate when it hits the ground, sending out deadly shrapnel. A typical cluster munition, with dozens to hundreds of sub-munitions, can kill or injure anyone in an area the size of one or two football fields. The human cost of cluster munitions
Ali Oussama Joumaa’ - Lebanon
Ali Oussama Joumaa’ was 11 years old when he was injured by a cluster bomb. Two weeks into the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, he was playing in the streets near his family’s house in Houmin El, Fawka, Lebanon when he and his three cousins found some unexploded cluster bomblets. “They were everywhere around us. We knew that they were dangerous and we went to report them, but I fell and my hand hit one. It exploded and my hand was badly injured,” says Oussama. He was lucky not to have been more seriously injured, as cluster submunitions are designed to kill.
Umarbek Pulodov - Tajikistan
The war in Tajikistan started when Umarbek Pulodov was six years old. One morning he was playing with his brothers when cluster bombs fell on their house. As he ran outside in panic he passed his one year old brother and sister, crying, but could not reach them to help them. He ran into the yard in confusion, and it was not until later that he realized that he had suffered serious injuries to his hand and to his eyes.
Eventually, after a year in hospital, his injuries healed. However one of his brothers and his uncle were killed in the bombing. His sister and two little brothers were also injured. His sister had to have five operations, and her hands did not work properly for several years. She also suffered head injuries, cuts to her arm and hand, and a piece of shrapnel traveled through her abdomen.
When Umarbek and his brothers and sister returned to their home after their time in hospital there were still unexploded bomblets in the house and garden. His family threw all the bomblets they could find into the river so that children could not play with them.
Adnan Maloku - Kosovo
On 17 August 1999, the Maloku family went swimming at a small lake nearby their home village of Nerodimlje in Kosovo. Seven-year-old Adnan came across a yellow metal object, which he did not realise was an unexploded BLU-97 cluster munition deployed by the US during air strikes.
The bomblet exploded when his elder brother, Gazmend, dropped it - killing him and their father instantly and injuring Adnan’s left arm and leg. When Adnan’s sister, 14-year-old Sanije went back to the site to pick up the family’s belongings she also stepped on a cluster munition and was killed instantly.
After receiving medical treatment, Adnan returned to school in January 2000. When interviewed in 2005 at the age of thirteen, Adnan said his left arm remained weak and he could not lift heavy things. He lives with his elder sister Ymrije and their mother, who remains deeply traumatized. They scrape by on the father’s 62-euro monthly pension. Source: Handicap International
Recent use of cluster bombs
Lebanon
In August 2006, Israel deployed 90 percent of its cluster bomb strikes in the final 72 hours of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, when it knew there would be an end to the conflict. An estimated four million submunitions were fired. This created more than one million unexploded cluster munition duds, an estimated failure rate of between 30 and 40 percent.
As of November 4, 2006, more than 58,000 submunitions had been cleared and destroyed by the UN Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon (UNMACC) and its contractors, UNIFIL, and the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Unexploded submunitions are killing or injuring an average of three people daily in Lebanon and pose a threat to returnees, humanitarian workers, and peacekeepers. Many farmers have not been able to harvest or plant crops due to the submunition contamination.
Iraq
During the 2003 Iraq air war, cluster munitions dropped by UK and US forces caused more civilian casualties than any other weapon system, apart from small arms fire. An estimated 1.9 million sub-munitions were dropped.
In three weeks from March 20 to April 9, US and UK air forces dropped more cluster bombs in Iraq than they did in Afghanistan in six months. In Iraq, the United States used at least 1,206 clusters, containing more than 200,000 submunitions, only twenty-two shy of its half-year total for Afghanistan.
Find out more about the Cluster Munitions Conference in Wellington and related events.
Sign the petition to Ban cluster bombs! online.
