Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

Shadi Sa`id `Aoun, a 26-year-old farmer, talked to Human Rights Watch from his
hospital bed in Saida:
I got injured on Wednesday, September 13 th [2006] in Tair Debbe. I had
gone to work in the orange orchard. After the war, we saw over 1,000
unexploded clusters in my orchard. We exploded over 800 of them. We
would put some plastic material with diesel oil and light it up next to
the cluster bomb, and the heat would cause it to explode a few
minutes later. We had been doing this for 20 to 25 days. In a carton, I
had gathered 80 of the cluster bombs. Those looked like they had lost
their trigger, so I assumed it was safe to gather them and had not
exploded them. The Lebanese Army came on Wednesday and was
clearing a neighboring field. I wanted to carry the box with the 80
cluster bombs to the other field. While I was lifting the box, the bottom
fell out and one or more of them exploded. My two legs are broken.
The left leg went left, and the right leg went right. The bones were
crushed. 187
In `Ein Ba`al, Hussein `Ali Kiki, a 32-year-old construction worker, told Human Rights
Watch about a submunition incident on August 19, 2006, that injured him and killed
a friend:
We went to take a number of clusters out of a friend’s orchard. It was
the first Saturday after the ceasefire. The orchard is between Batoulay
and Ras al-`Ein. I was working with my friend `Ali Muhammad Abu `Eid,
who had worked in the past for BACTEC [a demining group]. We were
removing the ones with the white ribbons with no difficulty. We had
already removed a bunch of them. But then we saw one that looked
slightly different. It looks like the other ones but it is a bit thicker. It is
also a bit more white with a red dot on it. We did not know how to
disarm it, and it exploded. My friend `Ali died immediately. I got
187 Human Rights Watch interview with Shadi Sa`id `Aoun, farmer, Hammoud Hospital, Saida, September 22, 2006.
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