LEBANON: Chinese contingnent of the UN force carries out dangerous work of clearing upexploded ordinance in South Lebanon

Chinese soldiers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) continued to remove unexploded ordinance from the area of Ras al Biyadaon Monday (August 28). The Chinese have a battalion of troops in Lebanon as part of the original 2000 strong UNIFIL force. The Chinese demining team is a small but very important part of the UNIFIL force, removing all types of weapons used in the 34-day war between Hizbollah and Israel, including rocket propelled grenades, 500 kilogramme bombs, missiles and cluster bombs. The work is very dangerous, and has claimed the lives of three Lebanese deminers already last week. The soldiers died as they tried to clear an unexploded rocket for the town of Tebnine. Deminers from the Mine Action Group (MAG) told Reuters last week that the job of making southern Lebanon safe will take years. MAG workers estimate that thirty percent of all ordinance fired, launched or dropped during the war failed to explode. The main threat from the unexploded weapons is to children and farmers. MAG estimates that around three children a day are injured or killed by the ordinance, manly from clusters bombs. Children mistake the small bombs for toys, picking them up to play with. The fields and areas around the villages of the south are littered with bombs making many farmers too scared to tend to their crops. The arrival of more UNIFIL troops will increase the removal of the unexploded weapons. 200 French combat engineers arrived at the UNIFIL headquarters at Naqoura last week. One of their main tasks will be aiding teams such as the Chinese in completing the large task ahead of them.

ITN Source | August 29, 2006

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