Cluster bombs unleashed on both sides

LEBANON - Hizbollah launched cluster bombs into civilian areas of northern Israel during the five week Lebanon war, a leading international human rights agency declared yesterday.

Human Rights Watch said it had established that the Lebanese guerrilla group had used cluster munitions by deploying 122m Chinese-made Type 81 rockets during its attacks on Jewish and Arab communities in Israel.

The agency said this was also the first documented use of this particular model of cluster weapon - so called because it contains dozens of bomblets or "submunitions" which maximise the risk to people on the ground.

The disclosure follows a mounting controversy over Israel's systematic use of cluster weapons during the conflict - which left as many as a million hazardous "duds" which failed to explode on impact and which Human Rights Watch said are still injuring three civilians a day and disrupting the country's economic recovery. Twenty people have died since the August ceasefire.

Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch's arms division said: "We are disturbed to discover that not only Israel but also Hizbollah used cluster munitions in their recent conflict, at a time when many countries are turning away from this kind of weapon precisely because of its impact on civilians."

HRW said Israeli authorities had, until now, prevented publication of details of Hizbollah cluster strikes in Israel, citing security concerns. But it had documented the use of the weapon on the Arab Israeli Galilee village of Mghar where three members of a family were injured by a cluster weapon.

Israeli police told Human Rights Watch, which also documents the Israeli use of cluster weapons, that they recorded 113 cluster rockets fired at Israel causing one death and 12 injuries.

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