Clearing cluster bombs in South Lebanon
Source: radionetherlands.nl, 07-12-2007
By Ben Gilbert
The Lebanese Welfare Association for the Handicapped in Sarafand, South Lebanon, is a private welfare hospital. Set on a hilltop near the city of Sidon, it's the hospital for Lebanese who can't afford to pay for their treatment. And many of the more than 200 people injured and killed by cluster bombs since last year's war between "Israel" and Hizbullah need the help. There was so much demand that the hospital opened a second branch in the southern Lebanese town of Nabitieh.
The clinics provide treatment, physical rehabilitation and prosthetic limbs to cluster bomb victims. 40-year-old farmer Hodar Mahmood is one of them. As I walked through the halls of the hospital, my guide, who is a physical therapist, led me to a large room, the size of a gymnasium.
There, in the middle of the room, were two parallel bars made of stainless steel at about waist height, each about seven meters long. Mahmood was struggling to use the bars to walk. But his legs hung like rag dolls. Mahmood is paralysed from the waist down. It happened about a year ago, he said.
"I was burning the brush in a fire, I turned my back to the fire, and there was a big explosion. A stone it me in the lower back."
The stone was propelled by a hidden cluster bomb left over from last year's war. It destroyed several of Mahmood's vertebrae in his lower back. He will never walk again. Now, he uses the parallel bars to learn how to move with a walker. His legs are strapped straight, so they won't collapse when he puts weight on them.
Mine clearance teams
Like Mahmood, many of the victims of the cluster bomb strikes are farmers, farm workers, or their children. Ahmed Hassan Naji is a 14-year-old ninth grader who loves football. Last year, he and his brother were walking through their uncle's field when they stepped on a hidden cluster bomb. It blew punched a hole through an artery in his brother's chest, and blew off Ahmed's foot.
And there is the case of Shadi Saeed Aoun, a 27-year-old farmer from a town near the costal city of Tyre. His banana farm was contaminated by cluster bombs. To make a living, he and his family needed to farm their fields after the war last year. They couldn't wait for the United Nations mine clearance teams to clear their land, so they started removing the cluster bombs themselves.
Aoun had almost removed most of them. But one day he picked up a box of cluster bombs to put in a fire to destroy them. One of the bombs fell out, and blew up between his legs. It blew off most of both his calves. But he kept his legs.
Completely immoral
Aoun is lucky. Cluster bomb explosions have killed 39 people, 26 civilians and 13 mine clearance personnel. Cluster bombs are usually used in war to destroy armoured columns of vehicles or infantry units. One artillery shell or rocket may contain hundreds of tiny bomblets, which are often no bigger than a flashlight battery. The United Nations estimates that "Israel" dropped millions of the bombs during the Lebanon war, most in the last 72 hours.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said he was "shocked" last year by the use of cluster bombs when a cease-fire was already in the works, and called "Israel's" use of the weapons "completely immoral." Dalia Farran of the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in South Lebanon says the problem is that many of the bombs didn't explode, basically leaving minefields spread through the towns, villages and fields of south Lebanon.
"In the case of south Lebanon basically we're looking to a failure rate ranging from 30 to 40 percent, which is extremely high." Farran estimates there may be a million cluster bombs that didn't explode, and it will take at least another year to clear the bombs from "priority areas," which include villages, roads and fields frequented by farmers.
Banana groves
Clearing the bombs is a painstaking process. A team of Chinese soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon worked for a more than a month to clear a one square mile area in a field thick with banana trees. It's the second time the second team has cleared this area. Chinese Army Lieutenant Diwan Cheeyah says the first sweep removed the bombs in plain site.
"This area was checked last year after the conflict, now we must do work again, inches by inches, so it takes a long time to do this work."
At the site, soldiers in armoured coveralls moved inch by inch through the banana groves. Then they swept the area ahead of them with a mine detector. Then, they clear dead banana leaves away by hand. Then they advanced another 10 centimetres, and do it all over again. The team has found more than 20 bombs this time around.
Farran says the UN has identified 960 cluster bomb sites like this one - and they are still finding new ones. She says it would help if the "Israeli" government would provide information on where it dropped the explosives, and how many. But she says so far the "Israelis" haven't responded to requests for information.
"This is actually our biggest obstacle. Having provided this information, this would help tremendously to save lives from potential accidents, whether lives of civilians or clearance teams."
Horrified
Former UN spokesman and military analyst Timur Goeksel says he doesn't see any strategic logic for the amount, locations and timing of the cluster bomb strikes, except to punish south Lebanon's population.
"I had the impression they didn't want the people to come back to those villages and populate the area again." "Israel's" use of cluster bombs prompted the US state department to launch an inquiry into whether "Israel" misused US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon during the conflict. Many of the weapons used were made in the US. Furthermore, several reports in the "Israeli" press quoted "Israeli" soldiers who were horrified by the amount of cluster bombs they launched into Lebanon at the end of the conflict. The reports stirred some controversy about who ordered the massive strikes.
Treaty
The "Israel's" Defense (War) Ministry says the military used munitions to rout "Hizbullah (occupation-resistance) 'terrorists' from south Lebanon." The "Israeli" military has claimed it doesn't target civilians, and takes steps to minimize harm to them. But the cluster bombs continue to cause harm, and not just in Lebanon. Iraq, Afghanistan and countries in the Balkans continue to see civilian casualties.
More than 80 countries have pledged to support a treaty banning cluster bombs . One country that hasn't is the United States. American officials have said they're concerned
about the humanitarian implications of these weapons, but the US doesn't favour a global ban.
By Ben Gilbert
The Lebanese Welfare Association for the Handicapped in Sarafand, South Lebanon, is a private welfare hospital. Set on a hilltop near the city of Sidon, it's the hospital for Lebanese who can't afford to pay for their treatment. And many of the more than 200 people injured and killed by cluster bombs since last year's war between "Israel" and Hizbullah need the help. There was so much demand that the hospital opened a second branch in the southern Lebanese town of Nabitieh.
The clinics provide treatment, physical rehabilitation and prosthetic limbs to cluster bomb victims. 40-year-old farmer Hodar Mahmood is one of them. As I walked through the halls of the hospital, my guide, who is a physical therapist, led me to a large room, the size of a gymnasium.
There, in the middle of the room, were two parallel bars made of stainless steel at about waist height, each about seven meters long. Mahmood was struggling to use the bars to walk. But his legs hung like rag dolls. Mahmood is paralysed from the waist down. It happened about a year ago, he said.
"I was burning the brush in a fire, I turned my back to the fire, and there was a big explosion. A stone it me in the lower back."
The stone was propelled by a hidden cluster bomb left over from last year's war. It destroyed several of Mahmood's vertebrae in his lower back. He will never walk again. Now, he uses the parallel bars to learn how to move with a walker. His legs are strapped straight, so they won't collapse when he puts weight on them.
Mine clearance teams
Like Mahmood, many of the victims of the cluster bomb strikes are farmers, farm workers, or their children. Ahmed Hassan Naji is a 14-year-old ninth grader who loves football. Last year, he and his brother were walking through their uncle's field when they stepped on a hidden cluster bomb. It blew punched a hole through an artery in his brother's chest, and blew off Ahmed's foot.
And there is the case of Shadi Saeed Aoun, a 27-year-old farmer from a town near the costal city of Tyre. His banana farm was contaminated by cluster bombs. To make a living, he and his family needed to farm their fields after the war last year. They couldn't wait for the United Nations mine clearance teams to clear their land, so they started removing the cluster bombs themselves.
Aoun had almost removed most of them. But one day he picked up a box of cluster bombs to put in a fire to destroy them. One of the bombs fell out, and blew up between his legs. It blew off most of both his calves. But he kept his legs.
Completely immoral
Aoun is lucky. Cluster bomb explosions have killed 39 people, 26 civilians and 13 mine clearance personnel. Cluster bombs are usually used in war to destroy armoured columns of vehicles or infantry units. One artillery shell or rocket may contain hundreds of tiny bomblets, which are often no bigger than a flashlight battery. The United Nations estimates that "Israel" dropped millions of the bombs during the Lebanon war, most in the last 72 hours.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said he was "shocked" last year by the use of cluster bombs when a cease-fire was already in the works, and called "Israel's" use of the weapons "completely immoral." Dalia Farran of the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in South Lebanon says the problem is that many of the bombs didn't explode, basically leaving minefields spread through the towns, villages and fields of south Lebanon.
"In the case of south Lebanon basically we're looking to a failure rate ranging from 30 to 40 percent, which is extremely high." Farran estimates there may be a million cluster bombs that didn't explode, and it will take at least another year to clear the bombs from "priority areas," which include villages, roads and fields frequented by farmers.
Banana groves
Clearing the bombs is a painstaking process. A team of Chinese soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon worked for a more than a month to clear a one square mile area in a field thick with banana trees. It's the second time the second team has cleared this area. Chinese Army Lieutenant Diwan Cheeyah says the first sweep removed the bombs in plain site.
"This area was checked last year after the conflict, now we must do work again, inches by inches, so it takes a long time to do this work."
At the site, soldiers in armoured coveralls moved inch by inch through the banana groves. Then they swept the area ahead of them with a mine detector. Then, they clear dead banana leaves away by hand. Then they advanced another 10 centimetres, and do it all over again. The team has found more than 20 bombs this time around.
Farran says the UN has identified 960 cluster bomb sites like this one - and they are still finding new ones. She says it would help if the "Israeli" government would provide information on where it dropped the explosives, and how many. But she says so far the "Israelis" haven't responded to requests for information.
"This is actually our biggest obstacle. Having provided this information, this would help tremendously to save lives from potential accidents, whether lives of civilians or clearance teams."
Horrified
Former UN spokesman and military analyst Timur Goeksel says he doesn't see any strategic logic for the amount, locations and timing of the cluster bomb strikes, except to punish south Lebanon's population.
"I had the impression they didn't want the people to come back to those villages and populate the area again." "Israel's" use of cluster bombs prompted the US state department to launch an inquiry into whether "Israel" misused US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon during the conflict. Many of the weapons used were made in the US. Furthermore, several reports in the "Israeli" press quoted "Israeli" soldiers who were horrified by the amount of cluster bombs they launched into Lebanon at the end of the conflict. The reports stirred some controversy about who ordered the massive strikes.
Treaty
The "Israel's" Defense (War) Ministry says the military used munitions to rout "Hizbullah (occupation-resistance) 'terrorists' from south Lebanon." The "Israeli" military has claimed it doesn't target civilians, and takes steps to minimize harm to them. But the cluster bombs continue to cause harm, and not just in Lebanon. Iraq, Afghanistan and countries in the Balkans continue to see civilian casualties.
More than 80 countries have pledged to support a treaty banning cluster bombs . One country that hasn't is the United States. American officials have said they're concerned
about the humanitarian implications of these weapons, but the US doesn't favour a global ban.
