HRW Urges No Cluster Bombs to Israel

HRW Urges No Cluster Bombs to Israel

HRW Urges No Cluster Bombs to Israel
By IOL Staff

"Washington has a duty not to assist in replicating that death toll in southern Lebanon," Roth said.
CAIRO — Human Rights Watch has called on the Bush administration to reject an Israeli request for the delivery of cluster munitions to use in its relentless offensive in Lebanon.
"Harm to civilians is inevitable if Israel uses M26 rockets in Lebanon," HRW executive director, Kenneth Roth, in a statement posted on the group's website on Friday, August 11.
Israel has asked the Bush administration to speed the delivery of short-range anti-personnel rockets armed with cluster munitions to strike what it said Hizbullah posts in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Friday.
The M-26 artillery rockets are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area.
"These weapons killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in Iraq in 2003," Roth said.
"Washington has a duty not to assist in replicating that death toll in southern Lebanon."
Hundreds of Iraqi civilians had been killed when the United States used M-26 rockets