SPAIN/LIBYA (Agencies) The cluster bombs that are so much in the news these days because pro Qaddafi forces are bombing civilians in Misrata were made in Spain. The bombs being used by the forces loyal to Qaddafi were manufactured in 2007, a year before Spained signed the international treaty that banned them. Neither Libya nor the USA were signatories to the treaty, however. The company that made those in use on the population of Misrata is Instalaza, which claims it no longer sells them although they figure on the home page of their website under the same brand name they were sold over four years ago and supposedly destroyed after the treaty was signed. According to the New York Times,>
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one of their photographers examined and photographed rounds of the bombs, which each carry and distribute 21 munitions designed to both kill people and penetrate light armour. They strike large areas with a dense succession of high-explosive munitions and by their nature cannot be fired precisely. When fired into populated areas, they place civilians at grave risk.
The dangers were evident beside one of the impact craters on Friday, where eight people had been killed while standing in a bread line. Where a crowd had assembled for food, bits of human flesh had been blasted against a cinder-block wall.
There was no immediate comment from the Spanish government.
Instalaza went through a crisis in 2008 after the ban on cluster bombs enacted by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which forced the destruction of all cluster bomb stock. In January 2009, Instalaza still had the MAT-120 cluster bomb in its online catalog, and it is still there today, though the website states that the weapon remains in the catalog as a mark of their technological prowess and states that the weapon is in compliance with Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
Spain has not exported this type of weapon since it signed the treaty, according to the Foreign Trade Agency. Official statistics show that Spain exported arms to Libya in 2008 worth 3.8 million euros, in the categories of "bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles."
The United States has used cluster munitions in battlefield situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in a strike on suspected militants in Yemen in 2009.
The dangers were evident beside one of the impact craters on Friday, where eight people had been killed while standing in a bread line. Where a crowd had assembled for food, bits of human flesh had been blasted against a cinder-block wall.
There was no immediate comment from the Spanish government.
Instalaza went through a crisis in 2008 after the ban on cluster bombs enacted by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which forced the destruction of all cluster bomb stock. In January 2009, Instalaza still had the MAT-120 cluster bomb in its online catalog, and it is still there today, though the website states that the weapon remains in the catalog as a mark of their technological prowess and states that the weapon is in compliance with Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
Spain has not exported this type of weapon since it signed the treaty, according to the Foreign Trade Agency. Official statistics show that Spain exported arms to Libya in 2008 worth 3.8 million euros, in the categories of "bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles."
The United States has used cluster munitions in battlefield situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in a strike on suspected militants in Yemen in 2009.
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