Quetta | Thursday
A SHEPHERD stumbled across some 50 unexploded US cluster bombs in a mountainous region of Pakistan, local police officials said.
The bombs were found in a remote area 70 kilometres east of Kharan, in Pakistan’s southern province of Baluchistan.
The site is 100 kilometres south of the Afghan border and is in the vicinity of two Pakistani airbases that have been made available to the United States for their assault on Afghanistan — Dalbandin and Shamsi.
Cluster bombs scatter hundreds of smaller ‘bomblets’ over a wide area.
The bomblets also happen to be the same yellow colour as food aid packages being dropped by the US into Afghanistan, CNN reports.
CNN quoted General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying that that the colour of future food packets would be changed to blue, adding that it was ‘unfortunate’ that the colour was the same.
He said leaflets are being dropped that explain to Afghan civilians the difference between the two, spelling out which ones to pick up and which ones to avoid.
A rural police official said the shepherd, identified as Eshar, found the bombs on Tuesday as he herded his sheep.
He hit one and it exploded, injuring him in the legs, hands and torso. A companion took him to Kharan hospital where local police were alerted.
The official said that with no bomb disposal experts on hand, special officers were sent to the site on Wednesday and destroyed the bombs, which carried US markings, by firing on them.
Cluster bombs are meant to explode as they touch the ground, but experts say that on average 10% of the small bombs do not do so and can lie undetected for years, putting anyone who goes near them at risk.
The United States has being dropping cluster bombs on Afghanistan despite protests from human rights groups that they have the same effect as landmines and pose long term dangers to civilian populations. – AFP
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