HAVOC IN THE LEVANT
Cannot be harped upon enough: war crime.
UN and human rights organisations said yesterday that 13 people, including three children, had been killed between the August 14 ceasefire and Tuesday, and 46 people have been wounded.
“Every day we have to revise our count of what the scope of the problem is,” said Clark. “We just don’t know how big the problem is, only that it is huge at the moment and getting bigger every day.”
Human Rights Watch researchers have said that the density of cluster bombs in southern Lebanon was higher than any place they had seen.
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The UN Mine Action Co-ordination Center, which has so far assessed 85% of the bombed areas in Lebanon, has identified 379 bomb strike areas that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. Article
Dealing with the deadly legacy, one by one.
MAG is one of the agencies tasked by the Mine Action Coordination Centre, a partnership between the United Nations and Lebanon’s National Demining Office, with removing the cluster munitions.
MAG had been in Lebanon for six years clearing land mines but the priority switched to unexploded cluster bombs after the July-August war because they pose an immediate danger to people wanting to return home, said Dalya Farran, media officer for the Mine Action Coordination Centre in the coastal town of Tyre.
MAG’s four teams will be backed up beginning Thursday by 19 Iraqi bomb disposal experts, said Sean Sutton, a MAG spokesman.
Farran said the Swedish Rescue Services Agency also has two bomb disposal teams in Lebanon and the British organization Bactec is about to begin work. Article
