Nicholas Blanford
Daily Star staff

UNIFIL commander Major General Lalit Tewari says he is confident the Israelis will “soon” provide many more land mine maps, covering in particular the area north of the Litani river.
“We are hoping to receive soon more supplementary maps,” Tewari told The Daily Star. “There are many more
to come.”
The death of a six-year-old boy in April from a cluster bomblet has spurred peacekeepers to press the Israelis for any information they might have on the use of cluster bombs during the 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon. Thousands of bomblets lie scattered in several districts in the South and Western Bekaa where they continue to maim and kill the unwary.
Israel has so far handed over maps detailing the locations of approximately 400,000 land mines. The first batch of maps received in June 2000 covered 77,000 mines mainly around former Israeli outposts and 288 booby-trapped explosive devices. A second batch last December detailed the presence of some 300,000 mines along the UN-delineated Blue Line.
In April, UNIFIL received information on a further 13,600 land mines along the border south of Alma Shaab.
But almost no information has yet been received on mines planted in the “Jezzine corridor” the mountainous extension of Israel’s old occupation zone that ran from the Litani river up to Jezzine.
“We are working on receiving information on the area north of the Litani River. We have what we need for the Blue Line,” Tewari said.
Although UNIFIL is not directly involved in the Operation Emirates Solidarity de-mining program in South Lebanon, the Ukraine peacekeeping battalion is tasked with demarcating minefields, and
in some places clearing land mines, along the Blue Line.
Since January 2001, the Ukraine battalion has surveyed, marked and fenced in 359,428 square meters of mined areas. Another 3.1 million square meters have been surveyed. The battalion has removed 2,100 mines, a small number compared to the clearance rate of the international companies involved with Operation Emirates Solidarity. But Tewari said the battalion’s task was not to clear land mines but to ensure UNIFIL could access the Blue Line easily.
“In December last year, we changed the emphasis from clearing mines to marking and surveying,” he said. “It’s too slow for us to remove all the mines. So we need to fence off the mined areas so that we can access the Blue Line and carry out our job.”
Land mines are not the only menace to residents of South Lebanon. Thousands of unexploded shells and bombs lie scattered around former battlefields and front-line areas.
Of these cluster bombs are perhaps the most dangerous. The unusual appearance of some cluster bomb can be mistaken for toys.
When a young boy was killed by a bomblet in At-Tiri village in April, UNIFIL contacted the Israelis for information on the use of the weapon in South Lebanon.
“The Israelis are checking air force records and we hope to have some information soon,” Tewari said.
During the 1978 invasion, Israeli warplanes dropped cluster bombs on Rshaf and the surrounding area, including At-Tiri, where stubborn resistance by the Palestinians had checked the headlong Israeli advance. Irish UNIFIL troops who arrived in At-Tiri in the wake of the invasion recall seeing dozens of unexploded bomblets lying in and around the village.
The area between Srifa and Qantara villages south of Nabatieh, another Palestinian stronghold, were also struck with cluster bombs in 1978.
During the 1982 invasion, cluster bombs were used during the siege of Beirut and extensively in the Bekaa. It is unclear if they were dropped in the South, although witnesses at the time reported finding the casings that hold the bomblets. International de-miners have also found evidence of cluster bombs near Bayyada on the coast south of Tyre.
Three types of cluster bomblets have been found in the South. The BLU-63/B, which is shaped like a tennis ball, has been unearthed in the Rshaf-At-Tiri area. Each cluster bomb canister holds 650 individual bomblets. The canister is dropped by a warplane and bursts open in mid-air, showering the target area.
The other two bomblets are the MK 118, which looks like a dart, and the M43E1, known
as the “butterfly bomb” which bounces almost two meters into the air before exploding.

Tragic mistake

The latest victim of South Lebanon’s unseen and deadly legacy of invasion and occupation stares wide-eyed and unsmiling from a framed photograph garnished with a cheap white plastic flower.
On a sunny afternoon at the end of April, Abbas Faqih, 6, was playing with his brother Abdullah, 3, beside a road near his house, while his elder brother, Hussein, 10, sat on a rock reading a school book.
Abbas reached into a hole that had been dug to plant a tree and called out: “Look, I’ve found a ball.”
“Then there was an explosion,” Salim Faqih, Abbas’ father, recalled with tears in his eyes.
The blast killed Abbas instantly and wounded his two brothers, Hussein seriously. The elder boy lost a knee cap, had his right arm almost severed at the shoulder and received multiple shrapnel wounds in his stomach. Over a month after the explosion, Hussein is still being treated in a hospital in Beirut. Abdullah was struck by shrapnel in the legs but has recovered.
The “ball” Abbas had found was a BLU-63/B cluster bomblet, one of many that failed to explode when originally dropped by an Israeli warplane in March 1978. It was the second tragedy to befall the Faqih family as a direct result of the 1978 invasion. Fayez Faqih, Salim’s father, was killed during intense shelling of the village during the invasion.
“People are not aware of the danger of these bombs,” Salim said. “People find them and play with them until someone comes along, recognizes the bomb and tells them to stop.”
The Faqih family abandoned At-Tiri in 1982 when Israel invaded a second time, returning after Israel’s withdrawal in May 2000.
“When we came back, I had no idea about the dangers here … I wasn’t aware of land mines and unexploded bombs. It’s only when people are hurt that we learn.”
At-Tiri lies within the Operation Emirates Solidarity de-mining program and will eventually be cleared of mines and unexploded bombs.
For Salim and his grieving family, it cannot come soon enough.

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