IslamOnline - The Israeli army has rained Lebanon with more than one million cluster bombs and used internationally banned weapons like phosphorous shells and imprecise weaponry during its 33-day war, a senior Israeli army officer has revealed.
"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of the Israeli army's Rocket Unit said in a letter to Defense Minister Emir Peretz cited by the daily Haaretz on Tuesday, September 12.
He said the army fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets, quoting estimates from his battalion commander.
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The commander said the vast majority of the said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.
The United Nations accused Israel on August 30 of carpeting southern Lebanon with thousands of unexploded bombs in the final hours of its month-long war, when the stage was being set for a ceasefire.
The olive and vegetable fields in many southern Lebanese villages, the main source of income for thousands, have become no-go areas after being littered with unexploded cluster bombs and mines left behind by Israel.
The unexploded munitions continue to pose a deadly threat to the safety of Lebanese civilians retuning to their bombed-out homes in the south.
The United Nations estimates that more than 13 people have been killed and dozens wounded by such sub-munitions since the ceasefire took hold.
De-mining is expected to take at least a year.
It is hard to see this as anything other than terrorism on a massive scale. If anyone did anything like that to British or American towns, the outrage would be deafening.
But the US and UK government's will undoubtedly give Israel a free pass yet again. Under the carpet it'll go. The double standard is truly appalling. Universal values indeed.
Posted by: Garry | 13 September 2006 at 04:02 PM