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Friday, August 13, 1999 Published at 06:03 GMT 07:03 UK


World: Europe

No clear-up of Nato cluster bombs

Altin Kelmendi: A victim of Nato bombs

By Orla Guerin in Kosovo

It is two months since Nato bombs stopped raining down on Kosovo, but they are still killing people.

Latest news, analysis, opinion and your views
The hardware, history, and global impact, plus a daily update on the Nato air strikes
As many as 20,000 unexploded cluster bombs are thought to be scattered about the province.

Every day, somebody - often a child - is killed or injured.

Altin Kelmendi is just nine years old, but he has already been deprived of so much.


Click to watch Orla Guerin's full report
Thanks to an unexploded Nato bomb, he is a double amputee, living between a wheelchair and a hospital bed.

His cousin, Adem, was a victim of the same device.

Adem told us he cannot imagine going home again.

"How can I go back, without my legs?" he said.

Nato busy elsewhere


[ image: Children mistake cluster bombs for toys]
Children mistake cluster bombs for toys
British troops showed us the remnants of a cluster bomb.

To children, the bright colour makes it look like a toy, but Nato is in no hurry to take the bombs away.

Bomb disposal team Sergeant George Drysdale: "We are only called to actual sites that concern K-For troops, so we are not in the business of humanitarian clearing, there are non-government organisatons that come here to do that."

The Russians were clearing Pristina airport this week, though it wasn't a textbook exercise manhandling a 600-pound bomb.

Elsewhere in Kosovo, local people are trying the same thing, and dying in the process.

Learning about the dangers


[ image:  ]
Aid agencies are doing what they can. These days, normal lessons can wait.

The most urgent need is to try to warn even the youngest children about the dangers all around them.

Aid workers are using learning games to try to protect the children against what Nato left behind.

It's the best they can do. It will be years before all the hazards are taken away.

Nato attacked

There is a great deal of anger here that Nato is not doing more.

Roland Schwanke of Medecins Sans Frontieres: "They should collect what they dropped here, because we find aircraft bombs and cluster bombs nearly every day.

"For the de-mining organisations it is too much, and Nato dropped them so they should collect them as well."

Aid workers they fear the casualty toll will continue to rise, especially in the winter when the young ones start looking for firewood.

No-one ever came to warn Altin until for him and Adem, it was already too late.



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