Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

oad to visit his cousin when his brother saw something in the road that looked like a
stone. “My brother kicked it to see what it was,” Yaghi recalls. “Then it exploded. It
hurt my hand, arm, neck, and side—the same for my brother. For one week after the
explosion I couldn’t hear.” 224 When Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed
Yaghi two months after the accident, he still had shrapnel in his neck, side, and leg.
His brother also had pieces of the submunition embedded in his neck so close to a
nerve that they could not be safely removed.
A submunition also injured 18-year-old mechanic Muhammad Abdullah Mahdi on
October 4, 2006. Mahdi was moving a car motor behind the garage when a
submunition inside the motor exploded. Mahdi’s boss rushed him to the hospital in
Nabatiyah. Mahdi told Human Rights Watch, “I spent four days in the hospital. I
hemorrhaged and had five units of blood transferred. I still have foreign bodies
[inside me]. I will be like this for four months.” 225 Mahdi’s right leg is injured, and he
lost half of his left hand. A family member lamented that Mahdi has suffered both
from loss of work and from psychological trauma because of the accident. 226
A few days after Mahdi was injured, a submunition injured 64-year-old `Ali Khalil
Loubani while he was picking up rubble from destroyed homes. Unable to drive his
taxi during the conflict and unable to work in the tobacco fields since they were
littered with clusters, he took a job filling holes in the road for $20 per day. Loubani
said, “On October 7, at 8 a.m., I was working. I brought some ruins from damaged
houses and went to fill holes in the road on the border between the two Zawtars. The
ruins where I was working contained cluster bombs. I didn’t see it before it
exploded…. I didn’t know anything about clusters.” 227 Loubani lost part of his fingers
from the explosion. Although flesh had been transplanted from his arm to his fingers
to restore them, when Human Rights Watch interviewed him, Loubani remained
skeptical about being able to return to work as a driver.
224 Human Rights Watch interview with Amin Mustafa Yaghi, Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, October 23, 2006.
225 Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Abdullah Mahdi, car mechanic, Zawtar al-Sharkiyeh, October 23, 2006.
226 Human Rights Watch interview with family member of Muhammad Abdullah Mahdi (name withheld), Zawtar al-Sharkiyeh,
October 23, 2006.
227 Human Rights Watch interview with `Ali Khalil Loubani, Zawtar al-Sharkiyeh, October 23, 2006.
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Human Rights Watch February 2008