More than 240,000 cluster bombs were dropped on Iraq, the report shows. Australia refuses to use these weapons, which were said by doctors to have caused injuries to children during allied bombing raids....

A higher percentage of unguided munitions than expected had been dropped - nearly 10,000 as against nearly 20,000 precision bombs and missiles - but the proportion of smart weapons was still more than double that used in Kosovo and six times that used in the first Gulf War. It was a new trend in warfare, he said.

About half the precision guided munitions were laser-guided bombs and more than 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at Iraq.

• During the Gulf War over 30 million cluster bomblets were dropped on Kuwait and Iraq and, in the following months, unexploded bombs killed 1,600 civilians and injured another 2,500.
  
  
• According to a recent study by the Red Cross, children in Kosovo are five times more likely to be killed or injured by a NATO-dropped unexploded cluster bomb than by a Serbian landmine.

better if they had not joined the coalition at all, but anyway...

thanks dodo. cluster bombs are, along with depleted uranium, unspeakably vile inventions, which should make us furious they are used, in our name, paid for by our taxes.

utterly shameful, how can people allow themselves to become so completely immoral?

"These days, there's nothing more ridiculous than the truth." Leonard Pitts Jr

There are stories of careless tourists and souvenir hunters and "experts" who knew just a little less than they thought who have crippled, poisoned or blown themselves up in the last few years tampering with shells, mines and grenades found lying around.

Eighty years after the guns fell silent the bomb disposal squad from this area is still finding and then defusing or destroying hundreds of tonnes of unexploded ammunition every year.

It sometimes seems that the shadow this Great War cast over this unhappy ground will never lift.

As the shell cases begin to rot, toxic chemicals begin to poison The soil and seep, slowly into the water supply.

Ask how long this work might last and you get a shrug, "Three, four hundred years, hard to say."

27 July, Braunschweig/Germany (150 kg bomb, 5,000 evacuated):

17 July, Kjeller/Norway (phosphorus bomb, 47 evacuated):

15 July, Berlin/Germany (500 kg bomb, 5,000 evacuated):

9 July, Bologna/Italy (250 lbs bomb) found at high speed rail connection work site:

30 June, Graz/Austria (250 kg bomb, 131 evacuated):

2 July, Brunn am Gebirge/Austria (500 kg bomb, highway and main road closed):

People are not always lucky: 23 October 2006, near Aschaffenburg/Germany (one highway construction worker dead):

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

The bomb itself:

Archive photo of a 4000-pound bomb (no idea what the number is on its side):

Empty main street after evacuation:

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.