February 2009. United Press International (UPI).

Photo: Rebuilding after an Israeli bombing in the Middle East.

Beirut, Lebanon. The removal of cluster bombs strewn throughout southern Lebanon is slowing as international funding for the efforts has dwindled, an official says.

Tekimiti Gilbert, acting program manager for the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center, said mine clearance organizations are struggling to retain international funding and interest in bomb removal efforts, the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Networks said Thursday.

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About the size of an aerosol can, the colourful bomblets drop from airplanes.

“They look like sweets scattered in the sky,” said one survivor. “You don’t realize what they are until they touch you. You don’t know until they make you bleed.”

A single cluster bomb packs thousands of the small explosives, each with enough explosive punch to kill. Dropped from the air or fired from artillery, they spread over a wide area, and if that area has civilians, some of them are sure to die.

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Photo: Armand Emamdjomeh. Village in south Lebanon after Israel’s 2006 attack.

Tyre: A Lebanese man was killed on Thursday by a cluster bomb dropped by Israeli forces during the 2006 war in Lebanon, a police official said.

Hisham al-Ghossein, 39, was killed in the village of Qantara, near the Southern town of Marjayoun, after stepping on the bomb while working in his field, the official said.

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Tyre, Lebanon (AFP): Almost half of the areas in southern Lebanon contaminated with cluster bombs dropped by Israel in 2006 have been cleared, a UN official said on Wednesday.

“Forty three percent of the areas affected by the cluster bombs dropped during the July 2006 war have been cleared”, UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon spokeswoman Dalya Farran said.

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Broadcasts from Beirut VII: Rami Zurayk professor, activist in Beirut: Land and People.

A Tadamon! interview project aiming to highlight progressive voices from the ground in Lebanon on the ongoing conflict, voices independent from major political parties…

May 2008 saw political turmoil in Lebanon reach its most violent peak since the end of the official end to the Lebanese civil-war in 1990. A negotiated political treaty has brought temporary peace however fails to address the poverty at the core of this tension.

This interview with professor Rami Zurayk in Beirut presents a critique of the recent Doha agreement. Critics argue that the Doha agreement is a testament to how mainstream Lebanese political leaders continue to neglect the ongoing economic crisis, compounded by Israel’s military attack in 2006. Lebanon’s agricultural areas in the south were particularly devastated, leading to major internal displacement following Israel’s attack, as farm lands remain strewn by thousands of cluster bombs dropped by the Israeli military.

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Photo: Lebanese woman admits Israeli military destruction in south Lebanon 2006.

A cluster bomb dropped on Centre Block on Parliament Hill could also reach in its spread the East Block, Senate, Supreme Court, Sparks Street pedestrian mall, Ottawa Visitors Center, and parts of the Wellington and Metcalfe thoroughfares. Such is the range, and randomness, of the weapon.

Made up of hundreds of “bomblets” that scatter when a bomb is dropped, cluster bombs not only kill and injure civilians during attacks, but “continue to take life, limb and land from them long after the conflict has ended,” according to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a network of over 250 non-government organizations in 70 countries, including Canada, that is calling for a complete end to the use of these weapons.

Such is the case in south Lebanon since the summer war of 2006. The UN estimated that of around four million cluster bomblets dropped by Israel during its war with Hezbollah, up to one million remained unexploded, “contaminating fields, schools, rivers and homes.” These have led to the death or maiming of nearly 200 civilians since the conclusion of the conflict.

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