Lebanon saturated with US-made bomblets

Israel accelerated spread of maiming and death far into Lebanon's future just before the ceasefire

Lebanese trying to sort through the ruins of their country after Israel ravaged it will run into hundreds of thousands of deadly US-made surprises:

UN: Israel Dropped 90% of Cluster Bombs in War’s Final Hours
The top humanitarian official at the United Nations has lashed out at Israel for unleashing a deluge of cluster bombs in the final hours of its invasion of Lebanon. The official, UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, says the cluster bombs have affected large residential and farming areas and could be on the ground for years.

UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland: "Colleagues in the UN Mine Action Co-Ordination Centre have undertaken assessments of nearly 85 per cent of bombed areas in South Lebanon have identified 359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. What's shocking and I would say to me 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 really knew there would be an end of this." [from Democracy Now! for 8/31]

And The Independent reports:

Pressure for an international ban on cluster bombs has intensified as Israel stands accused of littering southern Lebanon with thousands of unexploded bombs in the final hours of its war against Hizbollah.

Campaigners yesterday accused the Israel Defence Force of leaving a "minefield" of deadly bomblets in villages and fields after firing hundreds of cluster shells, rockets and bombs across its northern border in the three days before hostilities ended earlier this month.

United Nations officials said that 12 people had been killed, and another 49 injured by such bombs since the war ended and that the casualty rate was likely to rise.

The Israeli government insists that it did not target civilians during the conflict and says all weaponry used was in accordance with international law.

Israel insists its use of weaponry is legal. However, anti-landmine campaigners have been pressing for an international ban on their use, arguing that cluster bombs are indiscriminate and their use in populated areas may contravene international law.

Mine-clearance specialists said densely populated southern Lebanon was blighted by thousands of unexploded bomblets, which can kill or maim if they are moved or touched. In one case this week 35 bomblets were cleared from in and around one house, while in another a woman lost her hands when a bomblet apparently became tangled in her tobacco crop.

Yesterday the United Nations official in charge of bomb disposal in southern Lebanon said his staff had identified 390 strikes by cluster munitions, and had disposed of more than 2,000 bomblets since the ceasefire.

Chris Clarke, head of the UN mine action service in southern Lebanon, said: "This is without a doubt the worst post-conflict cluster bomb contamination I have ever seen."

In a presentation at the international conference on conventional weapons in Geneva yesterday, he said that the "vast majority" of cluster bombs had been fired by the Israeli Defence Force in the final three days of the conflict, prompting campaigners to accuse the Israeli government of targeting civilian populations.

Israel may be right that this is technically legal if its highly implausible argument that civilians were not targeted can be believed (I don't think so.) Whatever, clearly it is immoral. The result of salting Lebanon with these civilian death traps is will be further humiliation and injury to the Lebanese people as they try to pick up the pieces. It makes me so sick I feel like heaving.

America supplied Israel with many of these bombs. President Bush has the audacity to call others terrorists.