I haven't seen this in the diaries but I think this ought to be front page news.
Israel has effectively mined huge parts of southern Lebanon with at least
100,000 unexploded cluster bombs - which can easily detonate when disturbed
by civilians returning to their homes.
What's more, Israel seems to have dropped most of the bombs in the last
3 days of the conflict, when a peace deal was well under way.
BBC:
The UN's humanitarian chief has accused Israel of "completely immoral" use of cluster bombs in Lebanon. UN clearance experts had so far found 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites, Jan Egeland said.
Mr Egeland described the fresh statistics as "shocking new information". "What's shocking and completely immoral is: 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," he said.
Below the fold: Israel's munitions are more "mines" than bombs.
Not only did Israel drop cluster bombs, but they used intentionally or not,
old bombs that have a much higher rate than usually of landing without
detonating.
Washington Post:
An unusual number of cluster bombs used in the war did not detonate on impact, possibly because they were old, Egeland said. Usually 10 percent to 15 percent of the bomblets fail to explode immediately. According to some estimates, up to 70 percent of the Israeli bomblets failed to explode on impact.
Civilians returning to their homes in southern Lebanon are experiencing "massive problems," as a result of these unexploded munitions, Egeland said. Approximately 250,000 Lebanese, of the 1 million displaced, cannot move back into their homes, many because of unexploded munitions. "Every day people are maimed, wounded and are killed by these ordnance," Egeland said.
The U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center, which has so far assessed 85 percent of the bombed areas in Lebanon, has identified 379 bomb strike areas that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets.
Why am I worried about cluster bombs (which are still legal weapons)
acting as land mines?
Wikipedia:
The use of these weapons is hotly opposed by many individuals and groups, such as the Red Cross, the NGO Cluster Munition Coalition and the United Nations, because of the high proportion of civilians that have fallen victim to the weapon.
These unexploded ordnance (duds) present a particularly dense and dangerous form of post-conflict contamination and may unintentionally act like anti-personnel land mines (which have been banned in many countries under the Ottawa Treaty) for several years.
Did Israel know that the bombs they were dropping would lead to a much
higher than normal (70%) percentage of unexploded remnants?
Previous diaries on the subject:
by heathlander (I missed this one),
by elishastephens.
FYI: There's more on-subject comments after the off-subject comments.