Lebanon : Ruthless Killers Are Still There

The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more, reports The Indepedent.

“The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon’s farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.

“In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. ‘I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him,’ said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father’s bed in the hospital.

“At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors.

“Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon.

“A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. ‘In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs,’ he said.

” ‘What we did there was crazy and monstrous.’ What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years – often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish – waiting to explode when disturbed.

Here is another first-person tragic story from Lebanon:

“I was in Lebanon in July 2005 on a trip to document the residual problem from cluster bombs used in 1978 and 1982. Unexploded cluster munitions were still claiming lives more than two decades after that conflict. I recently returned from another trip to Lebanon where I saw that a whole new wave of devastation from cluster bombs is beginning.

“The use of cluster munitions in Lebanon was an outrage. It was known before they were used that they would kill and injure civilians in populated areas because of their inaccurate dispersal pattern. It was known that cluster munitions would leave hundreds of their submunitions unexploded to terrorise civilians returning to rebuild their lives.

“With a ceasefire in sight, Israel launched millions of cluster bomblets throughout towns and villages in the last 72 hours of the war. The mounting toll of civilian deaths and injuries and the deadly unexploded ordnance contamination that will blight Lebanon for years to come were all predictable, foreseeable and preventable.

“Most of the submunitions used in Lebanon look like torch batteries with ribbons and others look like tennis balls. They are a deadly attraction for children who make up about 30 per cent of the casualties….”

For more on this story from The Independent click here

“Cluster bomblets become less stable – and more dangerous – as time passes. In Laos, nearly every day people are still being killed from bombs dropped 30 years ago. With an estimated 10 million (or more) unexploded cluster bombs, it could be many decades – or even centuries – until the killing is over.

“There are many different kinds of cluster bombs. The WDU-4, used in Indochina, contained 6,000 barbed metal darts which were released overhead. Eyewitness accounts tell of the WDU-4 literally nailing people to the ground. The CBU- 41 has bomblets filled with naplam, the CBU-89 disperses mines, and the Honest John carries 368 bomblets filled with sarin nerve gas.

“The CBU-87, widely used by the U.S. during the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, and the war in Afghanistan, has three kill mechanisms: anti-personnel (for people), anti-armor (for tanks), and incendiary (setting the target area on fire). The B1 bomber can carry enough cluster bombs to turn an area the size of 350 football fields into a killing zone.”

For more on cluster bombs click here.