In a strong indictment of Israel for using cluster bombs in residential areas towards the end of the recent Lebanon conflict, the United Nations has said it was "completely immoral" for Tel Aviv to use these explosives at a time when the end of the war was in sight.
"It is an outrage that there are now 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites in areas where civilians, including children and women, are present," UN official Jan Egeland told reporters on Thursday.
Israel's response was "excessive and disproportionate. These devices are going to be with us for many, many months, and possibly years," he said.
What is "shocking and completely immoral", he said, is that 90 per cent of the cluster-bomb strikes had occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when everybody knew that there would be an end to hostilities.
"It shouldn't have happened," he said. "Everyday, people are maimed and killed by those devices. Civilians are going to die, disproportionately, again -- not during the war-- but after the end of the conflict."
Israel denies using these weapons in the populated areas, but asserts that Hezbollah was using civilian facilities to fire rockets into Israel and it was only trying to destroy those positions.
Asked whether the use of such bombs aimed at causing maximum casualties is illegal, the UN Emergency Coordinator Egeland said cluster bombs are among the "most controversial" kind of weapons used today.
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