Civilians make up almost all the victims of cluster bombs over the last three decades, a humanitarian agency said today.
In a study of 24 countries and regions, Handicap International said the controversial weapons, which it wants banned, had killed, wounded or maimed 11,044 people, of whom 98 per cent were civilians.
The report said the under-reporting of victims in such places as Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam meant the real total could be almost 100,000, it said.
Today's report said some 27 per cent of the cluster bomb victims were children, mainly boys, who were working or playing in areas where unexploded munitions pose a permanent threat to civilians.
"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.
Sakina Merra, who was injured by an Israeli cluster bomb in the Lebanese village of Aita Chaab, rests in a hospital in August
Cluster bombs, which scatter huge number of munitions over wide areas, were recently used by Israel in its month-long war in Lebanon against Hizbullah guerrillas. The 34-day conflict left about 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis dead.
United Nations estimates 100,000 cluster bomblets failed to explode in Lebanon, with most landing during the final 72 hours of the war.
Handicap International says cluster munitions still cause between two and three casualties a day in south Lebanon.
Other places covered by the report, which the agency said was the first attempt to collate data about cluster bomb victims worldwide, included Chad, Laos, the Russian region of Chechnya and Kosovo.
Cluster bombs were first designed after World War Two for possible use against any Soviet invasion across the wide open plains of western Europe. The global stockpile is estimated at some four billion munitions, with around a quarter in US hands.