The New York Times reports today "that a cluster bomb used in an American bombing raid early Tuesday on Herat, in western Afghanistan, had left a village near a Taliban military camp strewn with deadly unexploded "bomblets" that were yellow in color and the size of soft drink cans."
As a cluster bomb falls, it releases 200 or so bomblets, and each bomblet releases 300 fragments of steel. If you are unlucky enough to be under one, it seems, you die a nasty death. That's pretty horrible, but it gets much worse.
Not all of the little bombs explode on the way down, and undetonated bomblets can litter the countryside. What's particularly devastating is that their bright color and shape make them very attractive to children (they resemble, variously, lawn darts, soda cans, or baseballs with little "parachutes" attached).

• cluster bombs explained by the BBC


• CNN on the use of cluster bombs in Kosovo


• what is a cluster bomb & why they should be banned, from the mennonite central committee


• the us campaign to ban landmines