Written question asked by Michael Moore (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 21 November 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 24 November 2005. It was answered by Adam Ingram (Labour) on Monday, 9 January 2006 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Unexploded Ordnance

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) what estimate he has made of the failure rate of each type of unexploded ordnance which remains in British areas of responsibility in Iraq;

Answer: [holding answer 24 November 2005]: By far the greatest amount of unexploded ordnance in Iraq are munitions left from the Iran-Iraq war, mines laid by Iraqi forces, stores of ammunition and other ordnance abandoned by Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. There is a far smaller amount of unexploded ordnance employed by coalition forces during the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq; this includes artillery shells and air-launched munitions, of which some will be cluster bomblets.We can give no estimate of the failure rate of munitions used by the armed services of other nations and we do not have information on the specific types of unexploded ordnance of UK origin which remain in our area of responsibility. There is no reliable means of assessing the impact of unexploded ordnance on Iraqi civilians in the British area of responsibility since the end of the conflict.Over 1,500,000 individual items of unexploded ordnance have been cleared in UK areas of responsibility since March 2003. We do not keep a record of the individual types that have been cleared.

Secondary information