An international watchdog group has decried the coalition's use of cluster munitions in Iraqi neighborhoods when the war geared up last spring, saying they caused scores of civilian casualties that could have been avoided.

The Human Rights Watch investigation also said the U.S. "decapitation" strategy didn't work, pointing out that 50 strikes on top Iraqi leaders killed "dozens of civilians," not intended targets.

In a 147-page report entitled "Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq," Human Rights Watch said Friday in a news release that U.S. and British forces used almost "13,000 cluster munitions, containing nearly 2 million submunitions, that killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians."

"Coalition forces generally tried to avoid killing Iraqis who weren't taking part in combat," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "But the deaths of hundreds of civilians still could have been prevented."

Researchers were in Iraq between April 29 and June 1 to probe civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure and they concentrated on the main areas of fighting in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. They visited 10 cities and interviewed scores of victims, their families and doctors.

Human Rights Watch said cluster munitions pose danger because of their "wide dispersal" and "since a large number of duds do not explode on impact and become de facto land mines."

On March 31, U.S. cluster-munition attacks in Hilla killed at least 33 civilians and wounded 109. A hospital official said that cluster munitions caused 90 percent of the civilian injuries his facility treated during the war.

U.S. and British forces didn't secure weapons and ammo left by fleeing Iraqi forces.

In the southern Iraq sector controlled by the British, "children playing in, and civilians scavenging through, the sprawling weapons caches often set off explosions that cause death or gruesome injuries."

As for the decapitation strategy, it "relied on intercepts of senior Iraqi leaders?satellite phone calls along with corroborating intelligence that proved inadequate. As a result, the U.S. military could only locate targets within a 100-meter radius -- clearly inadequate precision in civilian neighborhoods."

"The decapitation strategy was an utter failure on military grounds, since it didn't kill a single Iraqi leader in 50 attempts," Roth said. "But it also failed on human rights grounds. It's no good using a precise weapon if the target hasn't been located precisely."

The report said an April 7 decapitation attack in a Baghdad neighborhood targeting Saddam Hussein used a satellite phone intercept as intelligence. It killed 18 civilians and destroyed three houses. On April 7 a "decapitation" attack, and there was no evidence that anyone from the Iraqi government was there.

The report also criticizes U.S. air strikes on electrical and media facilities. U.S. and British forces did not secure large caches of weapons and ammunition abandoned by Iraqi forces, and the ready availability of these explosives also led to dozens of civilian casualties.

Human Rights Watch said while the U.S. Air Force in Iraq has been using fewer cluster bombs in populated areas in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and now Iraq, the U.S. Army in contrast "launched tens of thousands of cluster submunitions in populated areas."

"U.S. ground forces need to learn the lesson that the Air Force seems to have adopted: Cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life."

British forces in Iraq deployed 70 air-launched and 2,100 ground-launched cluster munitions.

The report also slammed U.S. air strikes on "electrical and media facilities."

(Courtesy to cnn.com)

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