Cluster Bombs May Be What Killed Refugees

The small craters and mysterious fin-shaped pieces of metal found next to civilian vehicles attacked in Kosovo suggest that they may have been hit by U.S. cluster bombs designed to destroy tanks.

Similar evidence has been found at several bomb sites over the past four days, including two roads on which tractors pulling wagonloads of Kosovo Albanian refugees were destroyed during NATO airstrikes Wednesday.

The intact bomb remnants, shaped like single fins about two feet long with a one-inch hole at one end, are stamped in two places with the name ALCOA, suggesting that the U.S. aluminum company made them.

The bomb remnants, small impact craters and at least one survivor’s description of “explosions coming from the air” do not jibe with a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb that the Pentagon said was dropped near the village of Meja on Wednesday, British weapons expert Nick Cook said.

NATO has suggested that Yugoslav forces attacked the refugees for their own propaganda purposes, but so far NATO has not provided any evidence to support that contention.

While stressing that he can’t be certain without seeing the bomb remnants himself, Cook said the description of the fin and small craters was consistent with several types of cluster bomb.

U.S. F-16s and B-1 bombers have been dropping cluster munitions in Kosovo, but the specific models are not known.

One type of cluster bomb, which the Pentagon reportedly wanted to use in the air war over Yugoslavia, is a high-tech, heat-seeking bomb that hasn’t been used before in combat, experts said in Washington and London.

“It is meant to be quite ‘intelligent,’ ” because there is a device “which actually gives it an aim point on the tank to provide ‘greater lethality,’ ” Cook, the editor of Jane’s Defense Weekly, said in an interview from London.

“You’d think it should be able to determine a tank between a tractor, but in practice, these things tend to get a little bit blurred.”

A bomb half that size would blast a crater 3 feet deep and 20 feet across, NATO Brig. Gen. Giuseppe Morani told reporters in Brussels.

The roadside craters seen at several sites across Kosovo this week are usually only inches deep and a few yards across but pack a powerful shock wave that throws hunks of jagged shrapnel dozens of yards.

“The circumstantial evidence points to some kind of cluster bomb,” said a U.S. defense expert in Washington, who spoke on condition he not be named.

The refugees, at least six of whom were badly burned, may have been the victims of the debut of U.S.-made CBU-97 cluster bombs, guided by infrared sensors and built to spray super-hot shrapnel into tanks, Cook suggested.

But without more evidence--or information from the Pentagon--”it’s still a mystery,” he stressed.

Jane’s reported earlier this month that the Pentagon expected to use the CBU-97 cluster bombs, known as sensor-fused weapons, for the first time in the air war over Kosovo to destroy Yugoslav armor.

They could be mounted on several aircraft, including F-16s, at least two of which were involved in the accidental attacks on convoys west and southeast of Djakovica on Wednesday, by the Pentagon’s official account.

At least two of the fin-shaped bomb remnants were found in craters near tractors that were struck in Meja, about three miles due west of Djakovica, in southwestern Kosovo.

Another fin lay in a similar crater, about 3 yards long, beside destroyed tractors and refugee wagons about nine miles away, east of Djakovica.

The same parts were found Monday beside civilian cars destroyed on a main road in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, and in the village of Merdare, on Kosovo’s administrative border with Serbia proper, the previous day. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

The Pentagon insists that pilots only fired on military targets east of Djakovica. Survivors of airstrikes in at least three spots along a 12-mile stretch of the two-lane road said jets attacked them several times.

Some of the refugees also said they heard explosions overhead, which experts said is also consistent with cluster bombs because the smaller bomblets drop after a falling canister detonates.

Cluster bombs are designed to hit several targets at once, such as tanks crossing a battlefield, and can carry different numbers of bomblets depending on their size.

Each CBU-97 dispenses 10 smaller devices that in turn drop four bomblets each. They find their targets with infrared sensors that detect the heat of an engine.

“It’s certainly a possibility” that the sensor-fused bomblets could drift as they fell, because they search for running engines and could strike targets at different spots on the same road, the Washington expert said.

CBU-97 cluster bombs also have fins, he added.

The British military has confirmed that its warplanes are dropping more conventional cluster bombs in the NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia, but only when pilots are “extremely confident there are no civilians around,” Cook said.

The Yugoslav air force is also known to have British-made cluster bombs in its arsenal, but the ALCOA stamp on the bomb pieces found at several sites in Kosovo leave little doubt they were American-made, Cook added.

Under the name ALCOA on the metal fin, the number 2 was followed by B24. Less than an inch away, there was what appeared to be a serial number: 8377401, followed by ALCOA 7075 and then the number 961.

The possibility that Yugoslav air force jets may have also bombed the refugee column shouldn’t be discounted because one could slip underneath a NATO jet flying at 15,000 feet, Cook said.

That is the “hard ceiling” at which NATO pilots are supposed to fly to cut the risk of being shot down, but the height of flight also makes it easier to hit the wrong target.

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All of Paul Watson’s dispatches from Kosovo are available on The Times’ Web site at https://www.latimes.com/dispatch.