Global bullet trade out of control -- Oxfam (Baghdad the worst)

LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Up to 14 billion bullets are made globally every year, enough to shoot every person on the planet twice, aid agency Oxfam said on Thursday in a report urging tougher controls on small arms.

As the United Nations prepares to meet in New York on June 26 to wrangle over regulating the trade in guns and ammunition, Oxfam said lax controls meant millions of bullets ended up in war zones and in the hands of human rights abusers.

And nowhere was this more noticeable than in Baghdad, where shootings are a daily event.

Oxfam calculated it costs just $2.40 to take a human life in the Iraqi capital. The aid agency arrived at the figure by multiplying the black market cost of a bullet for an AK-47 rifle with the eight shots it said was the average to kill someone.

"New ammunition is widely available on Baghdad's black market," said Oxfam director Barbara Stocking. "Either it was smuggled in from neighbouring countries or it was leaked from coalition or Iraqi forces' supplies."

"In either case, weak controls mean lives lost on the streets of Baghdad," she said.

Oxfam's report "Ammunition: the fuel of conflict" said big ammunition makers China, Egypt, Iran, Brazil, Bulgaria, Romania and Israel provide no data at all on their ammunition exports, apart from shotgun cartridges.

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