Cluster bomb experts face tough task in south Lebanon By Weedah Hamzah

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Thursday August 31, 2006

Beirut- The number of people killed by cluster bombs in southern Lebanon since the implementation of a ceasefire there has climbed to 13 and more than 46 has been seriously injured putting added pressure on bomb clearance teams, experts said Thursday. Chris Clark, head of the UN Mine Action Service in southern Lebanon, said that the explosives had caused a total of 59 confirmed casualties, 13 deadly, since the end of hostilities on August 14.

So far the UN team have located 390 separate Israeli strike sites where the munitions were used, he said.

About 2,000 of the potentially deadly bomblets, which litter the areas, have been destroyed, he added.

The United Nations has asked Israel to provide a list of sites targeted during its month-long offensive in Lebanon as crucial for the clean-up.

Cluster bombs contain submunitions, or smaller bombs, that are often no bigger than a torch battery, many of which fail to detonate immediately on impact.

Israel and other countries which have used the weapons, notably the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo, often face criticism because the weapons can kill indiscriminately.

Clark said that while it was "impossible" to give precise figures, half of the bomblets used may have failed to detonate.

"The situation is much more severe than what the UN encountered in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo," Dyala Farran, media officer in Tyre for the Mine Action Coordination Centrem a partnership between the United Nations and Lebanon's National Demining Office.

"As civilians return, they are encountering many of these duds," she added. "It's going to get much worse. It's going to be a much bleaker picture."

The Israeli military is believed to have fired around 2,000-3,000 rounds of heavy ammunition - not only cluster bombs but also artillery shells and more conventional bombs - each day in the early days of its offensive against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement.

That figure rose to 5,000-6,000 rounds in the final days of the fighting.

Farran said an estimated 10 percent of all munitions failed to explode.

Franck Masche, 38, a former German soldier and his team from the British charity MAG, have been destroying cluster munitions since shortly after the August 14 ceasefire that halted a 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters.

Since the end of the hostilities, an MAG advance team have been going from house to house in villages across southern Lebanon to locate the bomblets and spray-paint a big red circle on the cement so Masche can find them.

The German expert must always decide whether the device poses an immediate danger and should be detonated on the spot, or can be disarmed and removed for later demolition.

"We usually detonate between 25-30 a day," said the former German soldier working as a explosives ordnance disposal expert since 1992 with MAG, which is one of the agencies tasked by the Mine Action Coordination Centre with removing the cluster munitions.

MAG had been in Lebanon for six years clearing land mines but the priority switched to unexploded cluster bombs after the July-August war as these pose an immediate danger to people wanting to return home, said Farran.

MAG's four teams will be backed up beginning Thursday by 19 Iraqi bomb disposal experts, said Sean Sutton, a spokesman for the charity.

Farran said the Swedish Rescue Services Agency also has two bomb disposal teams in Lebanon and the British organization Bactec is about to begin work.

Masche has found so American-made M-42 cluster munitions from a 155-millimetre artillery shell that he named them "bomblet of the month" on his personal website.

"We try to mop up a village in two to four days," he says.

Doctors treating cluster bomb victims in a hospital in Tyre said most of the victims of such bombs usually loses their limbs because "the shrapnel, when you step on one of them or touch it with your hands, explodes, creating dozen of small (pieces of) shrapnel."

"Most of our victims are children who touch the bomblets or villagers who stepped on them by mistake," Dr Hussein Alam said.

The ongoing loss of life caused by the cluster bombs prompted the United Nation's top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, on Wednesday to denounce Israel's use of the explosives in Lebanon as "completely immoral," saying thousands of civilians were at risk from unexploded munitions.

"What's shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end," he said.

In addition to the problem posed by cluster bombs, southern Lebanon has also had to deal with around 400,000 landmines, many of which were left by the Israeli military when it occupied the region from 1985 to 2000.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur