It's awful, awful. But in a civil war such as this, in which civilians are never far from military targets, the risks of hurting non-combatants with cluster bombs are high. The Pristina hospital alone has treated 300 to 400 people wounded by cluster bombs since the air war began on March 24, Grbic said. Roughly half those victims were civilians, he said. Because that number doesn't include those killed by cluster bombs, and doesn't account for those wounded in other regions of Yugoslavia, the casualty toll probably is much higher, he said.
People think it's safe, and then they get hurt.
The bomblets can be set to explode at a certain height or time. They also can be tripped by the vibrations of a passing person or vehicle. The metal casing of each bomblet is scored so it will break into as many as 300 pieces of shrapnel when it explodes, according to descriptions in published guides to military munitions. Inflatable triangles and small parachutes often are attached to cluster bomblets to slow their fall, and journalists have seen numerous types and sizes at bomb sites across Kosovo over the past five weeks. All rights reserved.