A shepherd came across some 50 unexploded US cluster bombs in a mountainous region of Pakistan, local police officials told AFP Thursday.
The bombs were found in a remote area 70 kilometers (43 miles) east of Kharan, in Pakistan's southern province of Baluchistan.
The site is 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the Afghan border and is in the vicinity of two Pakistani airbases that have been made available to the United States for their assault on Afghanistan - Dalbandin and Shamsi.
A rural police official said the shepherd, identified as Eshar, found the bombs on Tuesday as he herded his sheep. He hit one and it exploded, wounding him in the legs, hands and torso.
A companion took him to Kharan hospital where local police were alerted.
The US has come under fire from human rights advocates for a bombing campaign which they say could usher in a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions, especially with Afghanistan's harsh winter around the corner.
The UN has confirmed that off-target bombs have hit civilian populations, and the Taliban has claimed a heavy death toll among noncombatants.
US officials have ridiculed such claims.
The official said that with no bomb disposal experts on hand, special officers were sent to the site on Wednesday and destroyed the bombs, which carried US markings, by firing on them.
Cluster bombs are made up of hundreds of small bombs, which scatter over a large area when the bomb is dropped.
They are meant to explode as they touch the ground, but experts say that on average 10 percent of the small bombs do not do so and can lie undetected for years, putting anyone who goes near them at risk.
The United States has being dropping cluster bombs on Afghanistan despite protests from human rights groups that they have the same effect as landmines and pose long-term dangers to civilian populations -- AFP
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