NATO's military campaign in Kosovo three years ago left a lethal legacy of unexploded bombs which have killed 58 people including children, a report released on Monday said.
Landmine Action, a coalition of more than 50 charities, said that 97 other people were injured by unexploded ordnance (UXO), such as cluster bombs, mortars, and rockets, in Kosovo from June 1999 to May 2001. Two-thirds of the victims had been children.
NATO warplanes carried out a bombing campaign in Kosovo during a 78-day war in 1999 to drive out Serb forces conducting a crackdown on Albanians while Slobodan Milosevic was Yugoslav president.
Milosevic is currently on trial in The Hague for genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in 1999.
In his defence he said NATO leaders should be in the dock themselves for killing civilians during the bombing campaign, which was mostly undertaken by the United States, Italy, France, Britain and Canada.
Landmine Action said UXO was a far bigger killer of innocent victims than landmines, while those that used such weapons had no legal obligation to clear them up afterwards.
Its report focused on the UXO impact on a number of communities affected by conflict but particularly those in Kosovo and Cambodia, Richard Lloyd, director of the London-based campaign group, said.
In Cambodia, 397 people had been killed or injured in the year up to August 2001, from bombs dropped during the civil war between the government and the Khmer Rouge, and also by US planes during the Vietnam War.
"UXO are a forgotten but lethal legacy of every war. Thousands of people around the world must live with the constant threat as they go about their daily lives," Lloyd said.
Monday's report said most of the UXO victims had been carrying out rural activities such as farming, and the presence of UXO could have huge economic consequences forcing a change in the use of land or the abandonment of entire communities.
It said that unlike with landmines, cluster bombs were far more likely to cause death.
Landmine Action called for a new international humanitarian law to force states that used explosive munitions to clear them up, or pay for their removal, when hostilities ceased, along with a moratorium on the use and sale of cluster bombs.
(China Daily March 25, 2002)
