KABUL, March 6, (Agencies): The Red Cross Saturday condemned the use of booby trap bombs by the Taleban in an area of southern Afghanistan that has been so heavily mined people are afraid to leave their homes.
The bombs — or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — are also preventing refugees from returning to the area of Helmand province where US Marines have led 15,000 troops in an assault against the Taleban, it said.
In an unusually strong statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the use of IEDs — the main weapon in the Taleban arsenal — was “completely unacceptable.”
The Marjah farming area has been so heavily mined with IEDs that civilians were largely confined indoors and the sick and injured could not be evacuated for help, it said.
People who fled the area before and during the assault, launched on February 13, feared returning to villages where commanders and residents have said the bombs are planted in fields, hanging from trees and even embedded in the walls of houses.
“Improvised mines and other explosive devices are posing a deadly threat to civilians in Marjah,” Reto Stocker, head of the ICRC in Kabul, was quoted in a statement as saying.
“They make it almost impossible for people to venture out or to evacuate the sick and wounded, who therefore receive little or no medical care,” he said.
The use of mines, and the lack of any measures to protect civilians “runs counter to the most basic principles of international humanitarian law,” the statement said.
“Any use of these weapons, which are prohibited in the country under the Mine Ban Convention just as they are in 155 other countries, is completely unacceptable.”
The Red Cross rarely employs such powerful language, preferring to raise such issues confidentially with all parties to the conflict, in hopes they will adhere to accepted guidelines for treatment of civilians and war wounded.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown flew in to Afghanistan on Saturday to tour a recently captured Taleban stronghold as controversy grew in Britain over whether he had starved British forces of funding.
With an election no more than three months away, a fierce debate is raging in Britain over whether British forces have been properly equipped to fight the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Brown sparked renewed debate on Friday when he gave testimony to an official inquiry investigating Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war.
In Afghanistan, Brown told British soldiers in Laskhar Gah, Helmand’s capital, that his government would do “everything we can to support you with the equipment necessary and the resources you need.”
He visited British troops at two front-line bases in the Nad Ali area of southern Afghanistan to thank them for their role in a major three-week-old offensive against Taleban insurgents.
U.S., British, Afghan and other forces have taken part in Operation Mushtarak, one of the first major tests of U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to add 30,000 troops to win control of Taleban strongholds.
Britain’s opposition Conservatives and some ex-generals accuse Brown — through 10 years as finance minister and three as prime minister — of denying military funds needed for vital equipment such as helicopters and armoured vehicles.
The Conservatives, who lead in opinion polls, accused Brown of rushing to visit troops to divert attention from his testimony to the Iraq inquiry.
Brown denied it, saying he had planned the visit — almost certainly his last before the election — for some time.
“It’s really important to come at this stage to see what progress has been made on this first operation under a new phase of action in Afghanistan,” he told reporters on arrival at Camp Bastion, a military base in the southern province of Helmand.