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<font size=4 color="#191919"><b>Deminers find new cluster bomb sites
without Israeli data <br>
</b></font><font size=3 color="#191919">Report, <i>Electronic
Lebanon,</i> 23 January 2008<br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9247.shtml" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9247.shtml</a> <br><br>
<img src="http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/2/080123-irin.jpg" width=483 height=322 alt="[]">
<br>
Deminers from the Mine Action Group scour farmland in the village of
Zawtar West in south Lebanon for Israeli-dropped cluster bombs. (Hugh
Macleod/<a href="http://www.irinnews.org/">IRIN</a>) <br><br>
ZAWTAR WEST, 22 January (IRIN) - Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped
cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new sites
per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data that would
assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which
continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. A
single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.<br><br>
"All these weapons systems are computerized and grid references are
entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data
from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance," Dalya
Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for
South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN.<br><br>
The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets --
most US-supplied -- onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006
July war with Hizballah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been
agreed.<br><br>
In a 24 December report last year
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9185.shtml">the Israeli
military cleared itself of accusations</a> that it had violated
international law in its use of cluster bombs to fight Hizballah. In a
statement, the army said its chief investigator, Maj-Gen Gershon HaCohen,
said: "It was clear that the majority of the cluster munitions were
fired at open and uninhabited areas, areas from which Hizballah forces
operated and in which no civilians were present."<br><br>
Around one million of the bomblets failed to explode on impact, leaving
roads, schools, homes and fields littered with lethal explosives that
detonate when touched, making them a danger similar to anti-personnel
mines.<br><br>
<b>More strike sites<br><br>
</b>Initial estimates by MACSL that most of the unexploded munitions
would be cleared by the end of last year have been revised to the end of
this year.<br><br>
Since the end of the war, over 30 Lebanese have been killed and over 200
injured, many permanently disabled from the loss of a limb after
accidentally triggering an unexploded bomblet. The state provides no
direct support for cluster bomb victims.<br><br>
At the end of October 2006, two months after the end of the war, MACSL
recorded 796 individual locations as infected with unexploded ordnance,
totaling 32 million square meters of land.<br><br>
By late last month that figure had risen to 961 strike locations,
totaling 38 million square meters. According to MACSL, 137,000 bomblets
have so far been safely destroyed, mainly in high priority areas, such as
roads, homes and schools.<br><br>
<b>Farmers risk all<br><br>
</b>Tens of thousands of the bomblets still lie on farmland, however,
making agriculture -- the mainstay of the economy in south Lebanon on
which 16,000 families depend -- a dangerous and increasingly unprofitable
pursuit.<br><br>
A December 2006 report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) initially found around one quarter of all farmland had been
infected, though the UN now estimates the figure is higher, and that
nearly US$100 million in crops had been lost, along with 20,000
livestock.<br><br>
At the Zawtar West site, 12 kilometers southwest of provincial capital
Nabatiyeh, Lebanese deminers from Mine Action Group (MAG) painstakingly
work their way through 70,000 square meters of farmland, cutting back
precious olive trees in their search for bomblets.<br><br>
Head of operations at Zawtar West Ghassan Suleiman said many farmers
continue to plough their fields even knowing the land is littered with
unexploded ordnance.<br><br>
"Several farmers could not wait to plant their tobacco and
vegetables and so took the risk and ploughed," Suleiman told IRIN.
"Many farmers and shepherds have been injured while sheep and many
goats have been killed in the past two months, which represents a big
loss for farmers."<br><br>
Tobacco crops have been hit particularly hard, with official figures
reporting a 20 percent drop in the last harvest. Local farmers say their
land has been so badly poisoned by the scorching of explosions that where
20 kilograms of tobacco plant would have grown, today yields on the same
soil are just one kilogram.<br><br>
Many farmers have been forced to abandon their land and lease
non-infected land, adding a further heavy cost and reducing profits for
some to less than US$1,000 for the year.<br><br>
<b>"Worst use"<br><br>
</b>Zawtar West reveals the extent of the Israeli cluster bomb
bombardment, which locals say occurred on 13 and 14 August, the last two
days of the war. In this single, small valley MAG deminers have turned up
15 separate strike sites, with each strike site representing up to 650
bomblets.<br><br>
MACSL's Farran compared the use of cluster bombs in south Lebanon with
their use in Kosovo, an area comparable in size, in which NATO war planes
dropped cluster bombs as part of a four-month bombing campaign in 1999 to
drive out Serbian troops.<br><br>
"In a two-and-a-half-year program, UNMAS [Mine Action Service]
cleared 25,000 sub-munitions [in Kosovo] and that was 90 percent of the
problem," she said.<br><br>
"In Lebanon, in a year and a half, we have cleared 137,000 bomblets,
plus what have been cleared by the locals [representing just under 14
percent of the problem]. This was unprecedented and one of the worst, if
not the worst, use of sub-munitions in history."<br><br>
<i>This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and
information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the
United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or
reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the
<a href="http://www.irinnews.org/copyright.aspx">copyright page</a> for
conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.</i> <br><br>
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