British UN worker killed by Israeli bomb in southern Lebanon

Thursday October 11, 2007 14:46 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News

A British man, working for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in Lebanon, was killed on Thursday when an Israeli cluster bomb exploded near him.

Bint Ijbail village shortly after the Israeli attack – File 2006

Lebanese news sources said that the incident took place in the village of Bint Ijbail in southern Lebanon. The village is close to the border with Israel and was the scene of fighting during the Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Security sources have not released the man's name as his family has not yet been notified.

In 2006 Israel attacked Lebanon in a war which lasted for over a month. Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and attacked it from the air, including strikes on the capital,Beirut. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians were killed as a result of the Israeli attacks.

Israeli launched the war after Hezbollah resistance fighters captured two Israeli soldiers near the Israel-Lebanon border. The Israeli army suffered a big setback when none of the declared war objectives, one of which was the release of the two soldiers, were achieved.

During the course of the war, Israel dropped cluster bombs on civilian areas. UN reports state that several million such bombs were dropped by the Israelis and of those an estimated one million failed to explode.

The British man killed today is the third person to be killed this week by cluster bombs. A boy and a shepherd were killed in the same village in the past few days, bring the total number of people killed by unexploded bombs to 13 since the end of the war.

UNMACC has asked Israel a number of times to give them details of where the bombs were dropped. Israel has refused to release the information. The use of such weapons on civilian targets is banned by international law.

international | miscellaneous | news report ghassanb at imemc dot org