Unexploded ordnance a deadly new problem for Lebanon by Weedah Hamzah

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Friday August 25, 2006

by Weedah Hamzah, Beirut- The unexploded ordnance left across South Lebanon as a result of 33 days of the Israel blitz on Lebanon is posing an immediate and lethal threat on the country's residents, United Nations organzations warned Friday. The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC) is reporting an increase in the number of incidents relating to unexploded ordnance following the massive return of civilians to their villages in the south following the Israeli offensive that was ended by a UN-brokered ceasefire.

According to casualty figures provided by the National Demining Office of the Lebanese Army, 12 people were reported to have been killed and 51 wounded due to explosions of cluster bombs since the cessation of hostilities came into effect on August 14. Several children were among the casualties.

The MACC has located 288 individual cluster bomb strike locations all over southern Lebanon.

"Every day we hear about casualties - it's a large number," said MACC media officer Dalya Farran. "We're in an emergency situation."

On Wednesday three Lebanese bomb disposal experts were also killed by a cluster bomb in the village of Tebnin, some 15 kilometres from the Israeli border.

Hundreds of Israeli artillery shells containing nearly 200 explosive rounds each were fired into southern Lebanon during the fighting, landing in villages and towns dozens of kilometres beyond the border.

Assessment teams are racing against a tide of displaced people scrambling to return to their stricken villages.

New sites are being discovered each day as assessment teams push deeper into Lebanon.

UN Experts said an estimated 60 per cent of territory south of the Litani River to the so-called Blue Line has been assessed.

"Staff on the ground in the south have destroyed over 1,800 individual sub-munitions," Farran said.

At each impact zone, hundreds of tiny bomblets burst from the shells, creating a huge killing field of shrapnel.

But the UN estimates that a dangerously high percentage of these failed to explode.

"Not all of these, a majority maybe, failed to go off," Farran said, adding that those intact bomblets are hard to find amid the rubble."

The result, according to Human Rights Watch military analyst Marc Garlasco, are "minefields in peoples' homes."

"The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973," Garlasco said following a week-long tour through the south.

"Unexploded ordnance is a huge problem. It's getting worse, certainly as far as cluster bombs are concerned," he said

"There are kids playing with them and getting hurt, killed."

Some 100,000 leaflets and 10,000 posters have been distributed by the Lebanese army at checkpoints, and radio and television spots have aired warning the people against the dangers of live bombs in a massive public education campaign.

"It's mostly cluster bombs in houses, in gardens or fields, on roofs of hospitals or in main roads," Farran said, but added that their efforts are straining under a lack of manpower and material.

"We don't have the time or the assets," she said, adding that "more help should be coming."

A Lebanese government source said Switzerland, following a request from the United Nations, is sending special mine clearance and bomb disposal equipment to Lebanon to deal with unexploded munitions.

The supplies will include 1,300 specialized systems designed to defuse mines and bombs remotely, the official said.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur