Cluster bomb victims overwhelmingly civilian: report - washingtonpost.com

Cluster bomb victims overwhelmingly civilian: report - washingtonpost.com: "Cluster bomb victims overwhelmingly civilian: report

Reuters
Thursday, November 2, 2006; 4:44 AM

GENEVA (Reuters) - Civilians, a quarter of them children, make up almost all the
victims of cluster bombs over the last three decades, a humanitarian agency said
on Thursday.

In a study of 24 countries and regions, Handicap International said the controversial
weapons, which scatter munitions over a wide area, had killed, wounded or maimed
11,044 people of whom 98 percent were civilians.

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Some 27 percent of the victims were children, mainly boys, who were working or
playing in areas where munitions were lying around after failing to explode on impact.

"For 30 years governments have failed to address the disproportionate, long-term
harm these weapons cause to civilian populations," Angelo Simonazzi, the agency's
director general, said in a statement."