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Children maimed by Israeli cluster bombs in Lebanon |
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Written by Amnesty International USA
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Hundreds of thousands of children in Lebanon did not start school on time this September. Many of them had to change schools, either because theirs had been destroyed or because they had fled their villages after losing their homes. Nov. 2006, Wire- According to UNICEF, some 50 schools were destroyed and up to 300 were damaged by Israeli bombardments in the recent 34-day conflict between the Israeli army and Hizbullah militants. Thousands of homes were also reduced to rubble.
When the children eventually returned to school they found that many desks remained empty. Of the 1,000 civilians killed by Israeli bombardments during the war, one third were children.
Even though the war is over children continue to be killed and injured by unexploded cluster bombs launched by the Israeli army into south Lebanon during the war. Cluster bombs contain hundreds of small but lethal bomblets which spread across an area up to twice the size of a football field. These bombs often fail to explode on impact, but thereafter the slightest movement can set them off, killing or injuring those nearby. Their small size and shape – some deceptively like tennis balls, others like large torch batteries – make them particularly difficult to detect and attractive to children.
"They seem innocuous, especially to the curious mind of a child," commented Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in Lebanon. "They’re small, they easily conceal themselves amongst all the rubble or the debris of the bombing. We find that children unwittingly pick them up and then, sadly, suffer injuries from them."
Speaking from a hospital bed, six-year-old ‘Abbas Yusef Shibli told AI how he was playing with three friends near his home in Blida village on 26 August when one of the children tried to pick up what looked like a perfume bottle. It exploded, rupturing his colon and gall bladder, and perforating his lung.
His three playmates were also injured. Eleven-year-old ‘Ali Hassan suffered a broken leg and both he and his nine-year-old sister, Sahar, sustained shrapnel injuries. "Ali’s leg has to stay in a cast for one and a half months and he can’t go play outside," said Sahar, "and now it’s better to play in the house because of the bombs. I told other children not to touch anything outside, not even a stone, and even under a leaf there could be a bomb".
UNMACC estimates that about one million unexploded cluster bombs remain in and around villages across south Lebanon. According to the UN, 90 per cent of the cluster bombs were fired in the last three days of the conflict, after the ceasefire had already been agreed.
To date the Israeli authorities have failed to provide maps of the exact areas targeted by their forces when using cluster bombs. Without those maps, de-mining experts face an arduous and perilous task, and relief and reconstruction efforts are hampered. Meanwhile, Lebanon remains a deadly minefield for adult and child alike.
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