Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

contaminated by submunitions. 89 However, the lives of civilians in the entire 1,400
square kilometer area have been severely affected, as they cannot live in safety until
demining crews clear and inspect their homes and fields.
Shocking Scope: Number of Submunitions and Strikes
In the first two days after the ceasefire, UN deminers beginning emergency survey and
clearance work in south Lebanon identified 10 locations where Israel used cluster
munitions. A UN official said he feared it could be only the “tip of the iceberg.” 90 By
January 2008, the number of strike sites identified was 962, and continued to grow as
clearance professionals pushed into new corners of south Lebanon. 91
MACC SL has estimated that Israel used cluster munitions (artillery shells, ground
rockets, and air-dropped bombs) containing between 2.6 and four million
submunitions in Lebanon. 92 It arrived at that estimate in the following fashion. First,
it calculated that Israel fired some 16,000 to 32,000 artillery cluster shells containing
a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million submunitions. 93 To those figures, it added 1,800 MLRS
rockets carrying 1,159,200 M77 submunitions, which Israeli soldiers reported to
Ha’aretz newspaper. 94 It also noted that Israel dropped an unknown number of
aerially delivered CBU-58B cluster bombs, each containing 650 BLU-63 bomblets. 95
Given the high failure rates of these different types of submunitions, the UN has
89 Email communication from Dalya Farran, media and post clearance officer, MACC SL, to Human Rights Watch, January 15,
2008; UNDP, “CBU Contamination by Land Use,” current as of November 29, 2006.
90 See “Lebanon: Israeli Cluster Munitions Threaten Civilians,” Human Rights Watch news release, August 17, 2006,
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/17/lebano14026.htm.
91 Email communication from Dalya Farran, media and post clearance officer, MACC SL, to Human Rights Watch, January 15,
2008.
92 MACC SL, “South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet as at November 4, 2006”; Chris Clark, program manager, MACC SL,
presentation at UN Mine Action Service briefing on Lebanon, Seventh Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty,
Geneva, September 19, 2006 (notes by Human Rights Watch).
93 MACC SL, “South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet as at November 4, 2006.” MACC SL took a press report of 160,000
artillery shells and assumed that 10 to 20 percent of them were cluster munitions containing 88 submunitions.
94 Ibid.; Meron Rapoport, “IDF Commander: We Fired More than a Million Cluster Bombs in Lebanon,” Ha’aretz, September 12,
2006.
95 One source cited an estimate of 500,000 BLU-63 bomblets from CBU-58 cluster bombs. James Brooks, “How Israel Cluster
Bombed Future of South Lebanon, with US help,” PalestineChronicle.com,
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/printstory.php?sid=101606172430 (accessed October 18, 2006). As of January 18, 2008,
MACC SL reported that 28,136 BLU-63 duds had been cleared. Email communication from Dalya Farran, media and post
clearance officer, MACC SL, to Human Rights Watch, January 18, 2008.
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Human Rights Watch February 2008