Rasha Zayoun thought the worst of last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas was over when a ceasefire halted 34 days of fierce Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon. She was wrong.
A few months ago, Zayoun, 16, was sitting at home in the southern village of Maarake picking out thyme leaves from a bag her father had brought, when her finger caught on a ribbon attached to a cluster bomblet. The force of the explosion sent her flying into a wall and blew off her left leg.
"I used to like going out with my friends. Now I just draw pictures to pass time," she said, slumped in a chair, her prosthetic limb fitted with a black and gold velcro shoe, after an exhausting physiotherapy session. Zayoun is one of about 200 people maimed by cluster bombs dropped by Israel, mostly in the final three days of the war before a UN ceasefire took effect.
Cluster bombs burst, spreading bomblets over the ground and vegetation. They are air- or ground-launched canisters holding up to 650 munitions which often fail to explode on impact.
"The cluster bombs were everywhere: on main roads, schools, hospitals, internal roads, inside houses, swimming pools, backyards, trees," said Dalya Farran, spokeswoman for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in Lebanon. Cluster bombs have killed 30 people since the war, when hundreds of thousands Lebanese poured back to the south immediately after the August 14 ceasefire.
NO STRIKE DATA: "Three, two, one, fire!" yells Billy Bean, a deminer working in the thinly populated mountain village of Hallusiyeh, one of 929 cluster bomb sites UNMACC has identified so far.
A deafening roar from 24 cluster bombs found on a hilly plateau and detonated using military explosives echoes around the mountains. Only smouldering crevices remained after the blast, one of many that deminers set off every day. Bean belongs to BACTEC, a British demining firm which operates under the coordination of UNMACC in south Lebanon. Farran said UNMACC had checked and cleared 20 million square metres (215 million square feet), or about 54 percent, of an estimated contaminated area of 37 million square metres.
She said about 122,500 of an estimated 1 million mainly US-made Israeli cluster bombs had been destroyed, most in parts of south Lebanon previously cleared of landmines after Israel ended a 22-year occupation in 2000. Israel says it uses cluster bombs in accordance with international law, which does not ban them outright. Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel during the war, killing 43 civilians and several soldiers.
Farran said UNMACC's job would be much easier if Israel provided 'strike data' - detailed information on where cluster munitions were fired during the war - which might save lives.
"The biggest obstacle is that we don't have strike data. It's time-consuming to locate more sites. What we need is geographical location, types (of munitions) and quantities. "The United Nations has repeatedly requested the strike data from Israeli forces, but we never got an answer," Farran said.
"THERE IS HOPE": Such information just might have helped save 40-year-old Khodr Mahmoud from being paralysed from his waist down. Almost two weeks after the ceasefire, Mahmoud was burning off undergrowth on his land, when a cluster bomb exploded.
He now spends his days at home, mostly in a special bed surrounded by a black metal canopy dangling weights from a pulley that he uses in physiotherapy for his legs. "Sometimes I have feeling in my legs, sometimes I don't. I just want to be able to stand up again, I don't want anything from life," he said on the terrace of his home in Maarake surrounded by his wife and two children. He can now manage a few paces with his legs encased in steel braces and with the help of a walking frame.
For now, Mahmoud plans to continue exercising in the hope of regaining feeling in his legs - though the doctors have told him he might have to wait three to four years. "My legs feel like they weigh a ton. Sometimes one's thoughts go to a dark place and I start thinking all this training won't be of any use," he said. "There is hope, 100 percent, but it will take time."