Yet another friendly fire accident???

[Professur]

Four U.S. soldiers on patrol were wounded Saturday when an Iraqi girl handed them an explosive and it blew up in what is believed to be an accident, American military officials said

Col. Michael Linnington, commander of the 101st Airborne's 3rd Brigade, the wounded soldiers' unit, said the girl approached one of the soldiers with an M-42 "bomblet," a canister-sized piece of a cluster bomb.

"As she handed it to him, it went off," Linnington told The Associated Press.

So, a 7 year old little girl carries a bomb through the streets safely, but the moment she gives it to a trained soldier, it goes off. Strange. And, why did his leg need to be amputated, and not his hand?

OMG, don't tell me he dropped it.



Source

 

[Gonz]

Since it was 4 soldiers, the amputee may not have been the handee. If the kids parents were close enough to take her away (presumably to the hospital) they weren't close enough to tell her to leave it alone & call one of the soldiers over?

 

[flavio]

These cluster bombs are nasty, leaving these bomblets all over the place.

They shouldn't have been used and I wonder how many other accidents have already happened because of them.

 

[Leslie]

Since it was 4 soldiers, the amputee may not have been the handee. If the kids parents were close enough to take her away (presumably to the hospital) they weren't close enough to tell her to leave it alone & call one of the soldiers over?

That makes perfect sense to me...I'm not close enough right now to tell them to drop the hypodermic they found in the park, but I'm close enough to be notified that they got hurt and rush them to ER...I just gotta hope they've listened to what I've told them...and I'd hope I could assume the parents told her the same, but that the little girl just trusted the soldiers to take care of it.

 

[ris]

there's been debate here for some time that clusterbombs can result in an effective landmining of areas due to those that fail to explode. something like 5% are like that and its the civilian population that inevitably get caught up in it, also their use usually isn't monitored or recorded so areas can't be traced.

 

[Aunty Em]

According to that report an iraqi man was killed and 3 other soldiers were also injured in another similar incident. If adults don't know not to pick them up how do you expect a child to know?