Mission & Justice

Shlomo Shamir; 14/8/08

The United Nations said on Thursday that it has managed to clear wide swaths of south Lebanon of half of all cluster bombs fired by Israel during the Second Lebanon War two years ago. In a report released on Thursday, the world body warned that the remaining ordnances still pose a threat to the local population, particulary in the southern Lebanon village of Kafer Sir. “We’ve managed to clean up about half of the known cluster munition strike sites in this village. We hope to have the whole village completely cleared by the end of the year,” the UN Mine Action Coordination Center of South Lebanon said on Thursday. “This whole village was covered with unexploded cluster munitions. They were on people’s rooftops, hanging from trees, even in playgrounds.”

(more…)

Pakistan; 4/6/08; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23808204-12335,00.html

Five children died when a mortar shell they were playing with exploded in the southeastern city of Quetta, while a landmine killed four people in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal region today, officials said Aside from the five children killed, five others were wounded. They all belonged to an Afghan family living in Quetta. Police said they found three more mortars in the children’s home. “We’re investigating where they got them from,” senior police officer Rematullah Niazi said. Children were also killed when a passenger van hit a landmine on a road about 60 km (37 miles) east of Parachinar, Kurram’s main town. “We have a confirmed report of four dead, including two children,” Ahsanullah Khan, a government officer in Parachinar, said.
Pakistan, Landmines

Michael Evans; 23/5/08

Prime Minister Gordon Brown signalled his intention to phase out the use of all cluster bombs by British armed forces yesterday, even as the US reiterated its opposition to a worldwide ban on the dangerous munitions. Mr Brown’s statement yesterday electrified an international conference on cluster bombs in Dublin, which hopes to achieve a treaty prohibiting their use. Human rights activists interpreted it as a significant switch in British policy.  A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister had asked the Ministry of Defence to review the risk to civilians posed by the last two remaining weapons deployed with the armed forces, the artillery-fired M85 and the helicopter-launched M73. Until now, Britain supported a ban on condition that it excluded the two systems still used by British troops overseas. They emphasised that the weapons had self-destruct mechanisms so that they did not pose a long-term threat to civilians.

(more…)