AFGHANISTAN - Dec. 18 - US Faulted On Use Of Cluster Bombs.

In a report called "Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan", Human Rights Watch, based in New York, says the US military violated international law by indiscriminately dropping cluster bombs on populated areas, killing at least 25 civilians and wounding numerous others. The group also says that 127 other civilians were killed or wounded in the country by unexploded cluster "bomblets" that became "de facto anti-personnel land mines". 69% of those killed or wounded, the group says, were children. The report adds: "While US modifications in targeting and technology appear to have reduced the adverse humanitarian side effects of the cluster bombs used in Afghanistan to some degree, the weapon still poses a danger to civilians in future conflicts because of its broad footprint, lack of accuracy, and high number of explosive duds left behind". Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, denied that the US indiscriminately used cluster bombs and faulted the Taliban and Al Qaida for conducting military operations in populated areas. He said the use of cluster bombs requires higher-level approval than the use of non-cluster munitions. He noted that the US had dropped thousands of leaflets in Afghanistan warning civilians to stay away from the unexploded bomblets. "The biggest casualty in this misleading report is the truth", Wilkinson said, adding: "The truth is, no military in the history of war has done more to protect the innocent than we have in Afghanistan. The US restrained its force well beyond that required by the law of armed conflict". (Dropped from an aircraft, a cluster bomb releases 202 bomblets at a preset altitude. The bomblets float down to the battlefield on tiny parachutes and detonate when they hit the ground, spraying an oval area as large as 120 by 245 metres with steel fragments designed to kill people).