Source: http://news. independent. co.uk/world/
fisk/article1935 945.ece
Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on
Lebanon
Published: 28 October 2006
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in
southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault
that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them
civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American
"bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut
headquarters. We know that they drenched southern
Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the
war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are
still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we
now know - after it first categorically denied using
such munitions - that the Israeli army also used
phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be
restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva
Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United
States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two
bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce
fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli
troops last July and August, suggests that
uranium-based munitions may now also be included in
Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against
targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the
British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee
on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by
Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated
radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for
further examination to the Harwell laboratory in
Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the
Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the
concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two
possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is
that the weapon was some novel small experimental
nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon
(eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high
temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The
second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting
conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing
enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A
photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows
large clouds of black smoke that might result from
burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore
and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste
productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium,
it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank
missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is
less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less
radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth
about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it
denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas -
until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians
whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary
drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the
city, suddenly burst back into flames. Israel
officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon
during the summer - except for "marking" targets -
even after civilians were photographed in Lebanese
hospitals with burn wounds consistent with phosphorous
munitions.
Then on Sunday, Israel suddenly admitted that it had
not been telling the truth. Jacob Edery, the Israeli
minister in charge of government-parliame nt
relations, confirmed that phosphorous shells were used
in direct attacks against Hizbollah, adding that
"according to international law, the use of
phosphorous munitions is authorised and the (Israeli)
army keeps to the rules of international norms".
Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been
using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer,
Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman,
said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not
authorised by international law or international
conventions. " This, however, begs more questions than
it answers. Much international law does not cover
modern uranium weapons because they were not invented
when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions
were drawn up and because Western governments still
refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term
damage to the health of thousands of civilians living
in the area of the explosions.
American and British forces used hundreds of tons of
depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their
hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the
waste products of the nuclear industry - and five
years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the
south of Iraq.
Initial US military assessments warned of grave
consequences for public health if such weapons were
used against armoured vehicles. But the US
administration and the British government later went
out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the
cancers continued to spread amid reports that
civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato
aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU
shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq but it is too early to register any
health effects.
"When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the
particles of the explosion are very long-lived in the
environment, " Dr Busby said yesterday. "They spread
over long distances. They can be inhaled into the
lungs. The military really seem to believe that this
stuff is not as dangerous as it is." Yet why would
Israel use such a weapon when its targets - in the
case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from
the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions
can be blown across international borders, just as the
chlorine gas used in attacks by both sides in the
First World War often blew back on its perpetrators.
Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and
doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the
Busby report, said: "At worst it's some sort of
experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component
the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best - if
you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier
attitude to the use of nuclear waste products."
The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious
torture prison when Israel occupied southern Lebanon
between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline Hizbollah
stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted
red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was
108, indicative of the presence of enriched uranium.
"The health effects on local civilian populations
following the use of large uranium penetrators and the
large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in
the atmosphere," the Busby report says, "are likely to
be significant ... we recommend that the area is
examined for further traces of these weapons with a
view to clean up."
This summer's Lebanon war began after Hizbollah
guerrillas crossed the Lebanese frontier into Israel,
captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others,
prompting Israel to unleash a massive bombardment of
Lebanon's villages, cities, bridges and civilian
infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that
Israel committed war crimes when it attacked
civilians, but that Hizbollah was also guilty of such
crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which
were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their
rockets into primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.
Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the
latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for
the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply
Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as Israel
used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so
the Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit
an Israeli corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing
four Israeli sailors and almost sinking the vessel
after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.
What the weapons manufacturers make of the latest
scientific findings of potential uranium weapons use
in southern Lebanon is not yet known. Nor is their
effect on civilians.
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in
southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault
that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them
civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American
"bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut
headquarters. We know that they drenched southern
Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the
war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are
still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we
now know - after it first categorically denied using
such munitions - that the Israeli army also used
phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be
restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva
Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United
States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two
bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce
fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli
troops last July and August, suggests that
uranium-based munitions may now also be included in
Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against
targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the
British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee
on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by
Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated
radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for
further examination to the Harwell laboratory in
Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the
Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the
concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two
possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is
that the weapon was some novel small experimental
nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon
(eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high
temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The
second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting
conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing
enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A
photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows
large clouds of black smoke that might result from
burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore
and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste
productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium,
it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank
missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is
less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less
radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth
about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it
denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas -
until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians
whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary
drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the
city, suddenly burst back into flames. Israel
officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon
during the summer - except for "marking" targets -
even after civilians were photographed in Lebanese
hospitals with burn wounds consistent with phosphorous
munitions.
Then on Sunday, Israel suddenly admitted that it had
not been telling the truth. Jacob Edery, the Israeli
minister in charge of government-parliame nt
relations, confirmed that phosphorous shells were used
in direct attacks against Hizbollah, adding that
"according to international law, the use of
phosphorous munitions is authorised and the (Israeli)
army keeps to the rules of international norms".
Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been
using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer,
Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman,
said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not
authorised by international law or international
conventions. " This, however, begs more questions than
it answers. Much international law does not cover
modern uranium weapons because they were not invented
when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions
were drawn up and because Western governments still
refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term
damage to the health of thousands of civilians living
in the area of the explosions.
American and British forces used hundreds of tons of
depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their
hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the
waste products of the nuclear industry - and five
years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the
south of Iraq.
Initial US military assessments warned of grave
consequences for public health if such weapons were
used against armoured vehicles. But the US
administration and the British government later went
out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the
cancers continued to spread amid reports that
civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato
aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU
shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq but it is too early to register any
health effects.
"When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the
particles of the explosion are very long-lived in the
environment, " Dr Busby said yesterday. "They spread
over long distances. They can be inhaled into the
lungs. The military really seem to believe that this
stuff is not as dangerous as it is." Yet why would
Israel use such a weapon when its targets - in the
case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from
the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions
can be blown across international borders, just as the
chlorine gas used in attacks by both sides in the
First World War often blew back on its perpetrators.
Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and
doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the
Busby report, said: "At worst it's some sort of
experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component
the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best - if
you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier
attitude to the use of nuclear waste products."
The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious
torture prison when Israel occupied southern Lebanon
between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline Hizbollah
stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted
red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was
108, indicative of the presence of enriched uranium.
"The health effects on local civilian populations
following the use of large uranium penetrators and the
large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in
the atmosphere," the Busby report says, "are likely to
be significant ... we recommend that the area is
examined for further traces of these weapons with a
view to clean up."
This summer's Lebanon war began after Hizbollah
guerrillas crossed the Lebanese frontier into Israel,
captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others,
prompting Israel to unleash a massive bombardment of
Lebanon's villages, cities, bridges and civilian
infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that
Israel committed war crimes when it attacked
civilians, but that Hizbollah was also guilty of such
crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which
were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their
rockets into primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.
Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the
latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for
the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply
Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as Israel
used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so
the Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit
an Israeli corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing
four Israeli sailors and almost sinking the vessel
after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.
What the weapons manufacturers make of the latest
scientific findings of potential uranium weapons use
in southern Lebanon is not yet known. Nor is their
effect on civilians.
>
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