They say the war in Lebanon ended on August 14. But on October 22, more than two months after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, another cluster bomb exploded, killing a 10-year-old boy and severely wounding his brother as they harvested pine-cones in the southern village of Helta.
"It's around your neck...see, see! This is around your neck, you have to tell about this", screamed Zeinab in agony! "Have courage sister and look"... she...
more »They say the war in Lebanon ended on August 14. But on October 22, more than two months after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, another cluster bomb exploded, killing a 10-year-old boy and severely wounding his brother as they harvested pine-cones in the southern village of Helta.
"It's around your neck...see, see! This is around your neck, you have to tell about this", screamed Zeinab in agony! "Have courage sister and look"... she pulled on my sleeve to make me photograph the grey, blood-stained and shrapnel-pierced face (uncovered just for me to see) of the less than 24-hours-ago deceased Hassan Shamadeh, her cousin, whose body was laid for mourning in a room full of wailing women in Kfar Tibnit, a village in southern Lebanon, on December 6, 2006. Hassan Shamadeh, the 40-year-old husband and father of three, was salvaging rebar in the debris of a house destroyed during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah, when an undetected cluster bomb exploded, killing him instantly and seriously wounding his two nephews.
Since the ceasefire in Lebanon and the revelation soon thereafter that more than one million cluster bombs were dropped on the country--an act that United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland called "completely immoral" and that an Israeli Defense Force commander called "insane and monstrous"--the cluster bomb has become this war's Agent Orange in the sense that its legacy extends far beyond the end of the armed conflict.
In its 2004 report, the Pentagon acknowledged "the potential danger to non-combatants posed by UXO [unexploded ordnance]" and declared that it had "developed strict rules of engagement and targeting methodologies, intended to minimize risk to civilians in or near the zone of conflict." But in the world far removed from such legalistic technicalities and societal attention, cluster bombs continue to cast their deadly legacy.
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