Injuries in Lebanon revive bid to ban cluster bombs

Hassan Hammade was picking oranges near his home when a strange object fell from a tree in front of him. The 13-year-old picked it up.

"I started playing with it and it blew up," he says at his home in Ras el-Ain village, near the city of Tyre. "I didn't know it was a cluster bomb – it just looked like a burned-out piece of metal."

The bomb blasted four fingers from Hassan's right hand and injured his stomach and shoulder. The humanitarian organization Islamic Relief flew Hassan to Birmingham, England, for surgery. He is expected to return in a few weeks.

"Now I'm trying to write with my left hand at school, but when they give me new fingers, I hope I'll be able to write again and one day play sports," he says.

Cluster bombs have killed at least 22 civilians and injured 133 since the end of the summer's conflict between Israel and Hizbullah guerrillas, during which Israel showered southern Lebanon with the US- and Israeli-made bomblets.

South Lebanon's fallout has fueled campaigns for a ban on cluster bombs, akin to the prohibition of antipersonnel mines adopted in 1997. Civilians, many of them children, make up 98 percent of those killed and injured by the munitions across the globe, campaign group Handicap International found in a report of unprecedented scope released last week.

"Military personnel from user countries consider any [environment where cluster bomb attacks have occurred] a minefield, and the claim of disproportionate risk and harm to civilians is unquestionable," said the group, which analyzed the effects of the munitions in 24 countries and regions including Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Laos as well as Lebanon. Twenty-seven percent of casualties are children, it said.

Daily casualties from cluster bombs in southern Lebanon have dropped to between two and three per day, from a high of more than three per day in the first month after the war, which ended on August 14, Handicap International said. Most injuries or deaths were near houses.

Cluster munitions are not banned weapons. But their use in civilian areas violates the international ban on the use of indiscriminate weapons, campaigners say. The cluster munitions can be effective against hidden rocket sites, to prevent their use again, and to strike individuals in a wide perimeter. Israel has noted that the weapons were used in areas where it had told civilians to flee. That is not seen as sufficient by most analysts.

According to the UN, Israel dropped 90 percent of the cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war – when all parties knew a cease-fire was imminent.

Most homes and schools have been cleared since the war ended on August 14. But the UN estimates that it will take until the end of next year to clear about a million lethal duds resembling tubes, balls, or other harmless objects. One child described the bomb that maimed him as looking like a perfume bottle, and villagers have nicknamed a candy bar-sized bomb-type "chocolate."

Winter will make spotting the bombs harder. "Before, the locals could usually see them, but with the rains they'll sink into the mud and be hidden," said UN mines spokeswoman Dalya Farran.

Farmer and father of five Hussam Murtada has taken no chances. "Since the war, we've only let the children play in the house, we don't let them out of our sight," he said. "The cluster bombs affect children most of all. If they see one, they'll play with it straight away."

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