Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

However, soldiers have offered eyewitness accounts with a very different description
of the targets. A commander of an IDF MLRS unit told a Ha’aretz reporter, “What we
did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.” He said
that to compensate for the cluster rockets’ imprecision, his unit was ordered to
“flood” the area with cluster munitions. In one case, his unit was ordered to fire
cluster rockets toward “a village’s outskirts” in the early morning because “people
are coming out of the mosques and the rockets would deter them.” 122
Failure Rates
As described earlier, the presence of duds is an inevitable result of the use of cluster
munitions. “It’s a bad weapons system. So many things need to happen to deploy
and arm properly,” the program manager for MACC SL said. 123 A BACTEC deminer
added, “A lot of things can go wrong.” 124 Given the vast number of submunitions
used in Lebanon, the only result could be a huge number of duds.
Mine clearance personnel in Lebanon report the failure rates for Israeli submunitions
to be exceptionally high, with a large number of duds compared to impact sites. The
program manager of MACC SL has projected an average failure rate of 25 percent,
with up to 70 percent in some locations. 125 In some strikes, especially with BLU-63
submunitions, deminers have found dud rates of 90 to 100 percent. 126 The dud rates
in the field of Israel’s submunitions have been substantially higher than published
test data and also substantially higher than those found in previous conflicts, such
as Iraq and Kosovo.
Israel has not provided any reasons for the exceptionally high dud rates in Lebanon.
It questioned MACC SL’s estimates, claiming instead that the dud rate was under 10
122 Rapoport, “When Rockets and Phosphorous Cluster,” Ha’aretz.
123 Human Rights Watch interview with Chris Clark, program manager, MACC SL, Tyre, October 21, 2006.
124 Human Rights Watch interview with Johan den Haan, BACTEC, Tyre, October 25, 2006.
125 Chris Clark, program manager MACC SL, presentation to CCW Delegates, Geneva, August 30, 2006 (notes by Human Rights
Watch).
126 Human Rights Watch interview with Andy Gleeson, program manager and technical operations manager, Mines Advisory
Group, Kfar Joz, October 25, 2006.
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