IRAQ: The Pentagon admitted yesterday it had used cluster bombs to attack targets in residential areas of Iraq during the four week war to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Of a total of 1,500 cluster bombs used, 26 hit targets within 1,500 feet of inhabited neighbourhoods, Gen Richard Myers, chief of the general staffs, said in response to questions at a Pentagon briefing yesterday.
"In some cases we hit those targets knowing there would be a chance of collateral damage (civilian casualties)," he said. They were tough choices.
"War is not a tidy affair. It is a very ugly affair."
The Red Cross has condemned the use of cluster bombs and Human Rights Watch has said their use in populated areas may violate the ban on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law.
A 1,000 pound CBU 87 cluster bomb, the type US forces use, breaks up into 202 bomblets the size of soft drinks cans that float over an area of several football fields and explode a short distance from the ground, penetrating the entire area with steel shrapnel.
Gen Myers also withdrew his earlier allegations that an Iraqi girl who brought explosives to a Baghdad checkpoint that injured four Marines had intended to harm them.
Yesterday Gen Myers stated: "She was trying to return some sort of munition and it went off."
He responded sharply to questions about critical world reaction to the detention of three children, ages 13 to 15, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where the US military holds suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members.
"Despite their age these are very dangerous people," he said. "Some have killed. some have said they will kill again."
Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said the US was "keeping them down there to keep them off the streets".
Human Rights Watch has written to Mr Rumsfeld urging the US strictly to observe international children's rights standards at the US base in Cuba where detainees are held without charge or access to legal proceedings or relatives.
Iraqi prisoners will not be taken to Guantanamo Bay, Mr Rumsfeld said as it was a lot more convenient and less costly to hold them in Iraqi prisons.
Asked whether the US would treat former Iraqi deputy prime minister Mr Tariq Aziz as a prisoner of war, Mr Rumsfeld replied, referring to meetings with Mr Aziz in the 1980s, that "everytime I was with him he wore camouflage uniform with a pistol on his hip", and lawyers would sort out whether he was a combatant.
He said that between 7,000 and 7,500 Iraqis had been taken prisoner including 12 of the 55 most-wanted officials, but low level soldiers were being released.
"You can be certain that the people who we have reason to believe have information are being interrogated by inter-agency teams. And they are in fact providing information that's useful," Mr Rumsfeld said. He ruled out an Iranian-style government in Iraq as "another form of dictatorship and charged Iran with encouraging people to go into Iraq to attempt to influence the situation there, but he said his guess was that Iraqis would prefer "to be governed by Iraqis and not by Persians".
Meanwhile President Bush said "some evidence" existed that US air strikes on the first night of the war may have killed or severely wounded Saddam Hussein.
A spy in Baghdad communicated directly with US forces throughout the evening about the Iraqi leader's movements, he said in an NBC interview.