The Guardian
April 20, 2004
By Richard Norton-TaylorThe total tonnage of ordnance dropped by British aircraft on Iraq far exceeded the amount dropped during the Kosovo war, in about half the time, figures released today show, raising questions about the conduct of the war.
The RAF dropped 914 bombs between March 20 and April 30 last year, they show.
The Ministry of Defence says that the older armaments used, including cluster bombs, added up to nearly 350 tonnes: more than the figure for the entire Kosovo war.
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, has refused for "security reasons" to include figures for the RAF's new Storm Shadow cruise missiles and Alarm anti-radar weapon.
But the official weights of these two devices appear widely on websites.
If they are taken into account the weight of bombs and missiles used amounts to more than 460 tonnes in 40 days.
This compares with 347 tonnes dropped by the RAF during the 78-day Kosovo war.
The munitions figures for Iraq were obtained by the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell.
Last night Sir Menzies commented: "These figures inevitably raise sharp questions as to whether the use of force was proportionate and in accordance with international law."
Among the bombs dropped by the RAF were 66 BL755s, which release 147 "bomblets" over a wide area, up to 10% of which fail to explode.
The figures do not include more than 2,000 Israeli-made artillery cluster shells used around the southern city of Basra.
British howitzers with a range of 30km (about 18 miles) fired the cluster shells at targets described by the MoD as "in the open".
Designed to self-destruct if they fail to detonate, they contain 49 bomblets lethal over a large area.
The US defence department has admitted using nearly 1,500 air-dropped cluster bombs during the war.
But it has not given any information about ground-launched cluster munitions, which were used in far greater number.
Some estimates put the number of cluster weapons fired at Iraqi targets during the war as high as 13,000.
Human Rights Watch says that cluster munition strikes were a significant cause of civilian casualties.
Critics of the controversial weapons say the unexploded bomblets are as dangerous as anti-personnel mines, particularly to children.
The government has not estimated the number of Iraqi victims of British and American weapons during the conflict.
But some independent estimates put it at 9,000 Iraqi civilians killed and 12,000 injured.
The figures provided to Sir Menzies exclude Royal Navy sea-launched American Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The MoD says only that a "substantial number" were launched from submarines. "The precise number," it says, is "classified."
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