Cluster bombs kill in Iraq, even after shooting ends

By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — The little canisters dropped onto the city,
white ribbons trailing behind. They clattered into
streets, landed in lemon trees, rattled around on
roofs, settled onto lawns.

When Jassim al-Qaisi saw the canisters the size of D
batteries falling on his neighborhood just before 7
a.m. April 7, he laughed and asked himself: "Now what
are the Americans throwing on our heads?" (Interactive
graphic: How a cluster bomb works and more)

The strange objects were fired by U.S. artillery
outside Baghdad as U.S. forces approached the Iraqi
capital. In the span of a few minutes, they would kill
four civilians in the al-Dora neighborhood of southern
Baghdad and send al-Qaisi’s teenage son to the hospital
with metal fragments in his foot.

The deadly objects were cluster bomblets, small
explosives packed by the dozens or hundreds into bombs,
rockets or artillery shells known as cluster weapons.
When these weapons were fired on Baghdad on April 7,
many of the bomblets failed to explode on impact. They
were picked up or stumbled on by their victims.

The four who died in the al-Dora neighborhood that day
lived a few blocks from al-Qaisi’s house. Rashid Majid,
58, who was nearsighted, stepped on an unexploded
bomblet around the corner from his home. The explosion
ripped his legs off. As he lay bleeding in the street,
another bomblet exploded a few yards away, instantly
killing three young men, including two of Majid’s sons
— Arkan, 33, and Ghasan, 28. "My sons! My sons!" Majid
called out. He died a few hours later.

The deaths occurred because the world’s most modern
military, one determined to minimize civilian
casualties, went to war with stockpiles of weapons
known to endanger civilians and its own soldiers. The
weapons claimed victims in the initial explosions and
continued to kill afterward, as Iraqis and U.S. forces
accidentally detonated bomblets lying around like small
land mines.

A four-month examination by USA TODAY of how cluster
bombs were used in the Iraq war found dozens of deaths
that were unintended but predictable. Although U.S.
forces sought to limit what they call "collateral
damage" in the Iraq campaign, they defied international
criticism and used nearly 10,800 cluster weapons; their
British allies used almost 2,200.

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