Lebanon Body Count
arabmediawatch.com
Of the 1,301 people killed in Lebanon so far, almost all are Lebanese civilians, of which a third are children.
Despite Israel's precision weaponry, less than 5% of deaths (63) are Hezbollah.
4,097 Lebanese civilians have been wounded, including 1,000 children (25%).
The casualty figures continue to rise after the ceasefire began on August 14, due to Israeli attacks and unexploded cluster bombs, whose use is illegal under international law. Several children are among the 11 killed and 43 wounded by cluster bomb explosions since the ceasefire began. "Every day we hear about casualties. It's a large number," said Dalya Farran, media officer for the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon. "We're in an emergency situation." Hundreds of Israeli artillery shells containing nearly 200 explosive rounds each were fired into southern Lebanon during the fighting, landing in villages and towns dozens of kilometers beyond the border. At each impact zone, hundreds of tiny bomblets burst from the shells, creating a huge killing field of shrapnel. But the UN estimates that a dangerously high percentage of these failed to explode, leaving their targets strewn with deadly sub-munitions. "Not all of these, a majority maybe, failed to go off," Farran said, adding that those intact bomblets are hard to find amid the rubble, and when they are spotted, "people assume that because of their small size that they are harmless." The result, according to Human Rights Watch military analyst Marc Garlasco, are "minefields in peoples' homes. The Israelis were using Vietnam-era stock with an extraordinarily high dud rate. We've seen some ordnance that was dated March 1973." Garlasco said "whole villages have been contaminated" by bombs, adding that "unexploded ordnance is a huge problem. It's getting worse, certainly as far as cluster bombs are concerned. There are kids playing with them and getting hurt, killed." The UN has warned: "civilian casualties are mounting." As of 28 August, "more than 1,600 cluster bomb units and 11 other pieces of unexploded ordnance have been destroyed by UN teams," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Almost a million Lebanese civilians were displaced, including half a million children (more than a quarter of the population).
The UN and Lebanese army have also been targeted, despite Israeli demands for the army to reign in Hezbollah, and despite the fact that the army has not attacked Israel. 44 Lebanese troops have been killed.
During the same period, 160 Israelis have been killed, of which 73% (117) are military and almost half of the civilian deaths are Arab.
30 times as many Lebanese civilians have been killed than Israeli.
Up to 35,000 homes have been destroyed in Lebanon, making well over 100,000 homeless. For example, in the village of Tayyabah 80% of homes have been destroyed, 50% in Markaba and Qantarah, and 30% in Mays al Jabal.
A quarter of Lebanon's road bridges and flyovers (80 bridges and 94 roads) have been destroyed or damaged.
"The damage is such that the last 15 years of work on reconstruction and rehabilitation...are now annihilated," said Jean Fabre, spokesman for the UN Development Programme.
"I have never seen destruction like this," said UN Children's Fund water and sanitation specialist Branislav Jekic.
The people of southern Lebanon "have suffered severe destruction, some say worse than seen in Bosnia," and the area is "severely handicapped because of a lack of electricity and water, the destruction of infrastructure and the presence of cluster bombs," said Andrew Duggin, UN High Commissioner for Refugees engineer in the southern city of Tyre.
"The livelihoods of a large part of the populace are at risk due to displacement, disruption of transport and other infrastructure, unexploded ordnance, and social problems caused by the conflict; significant environmental damage is being reported," the UNDP said in a fact sheet.
More than 350 Lebanese schools were destroyed or severely damaged by Israeli forces, and about 150 others suffered "considerable wear and tear" after temporarily housing about 150,000 internally displaced people. "This plainly presents a massive challenge for the government and its partners," said Unicef spokesman Simon Ingram.
"Israel's assertion that the attacks on the infrastructure were lawful is manifestly wrong. Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks," said Kate Gilmore, executive deputy secretary general of Amnesty International. "The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy. The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was 'collateral damage', simply not credible."
Estimated economic losses for Lebanon are at least $15 billion.
Israel has caused Lebanon and Syria environmental disaster by striking an electric power plant, causing a massive spill of up to 15,000 tonnes of oil into the Mediterranean Sea. The UN Environment Programme says the clean up operation will take "several years."
All this for 2 captured soldiers? |
