SOUTH LEBANON: 100.000 UNEXPLODED BOMBS
by Flaviano Masella e Maurizio Torrealta

For the first time an Israeli soldier has accepted to talk about the war in Lebanon and he has launched a warning: "My batallion has launched about 1800 rockets. Each one contained 650 bombs, it sums up to about 1,2 million cluster bombs". About 10% of the shells contained in cluster bombs have not exploded, so in southern Lebanon there are about 100.000 unexploded bombs.

This episode of L'Inchiesta di Rainews24 has been prepared by Flaviano Masella and Maurizio Torrealta and it will be broadcasted uncrypted on Rai Tre at 7:40 am on Thursday, September 28.

The Israeli soldier says: "on one occasion we should have used simultaneously all the rockets available to the batallion. This operation had to be carried out at 4:45 am. Later on the order was more or less cancelled. We shot only some bullets and it happened much later. A few days later we were informed that the objective of the mission was to hit some villages at the time when people are supposed to come out of mosques. This would have provoked terror and fear among people and they would have not gone out anymore to launch Katiusha rockets..."

"Every time we had to shoot, honestly I thought, 'please no'. I hoped something would not work, I hoped the missile would not come out, I hoped the mission would be cancelled. Actually many missions were cancelled, but we shot a lot. Personally, I tried to delay things so to cancel the mission. I tried to do this kind of things, very tactfully, I checked the ammunitions twice... something to delay. It is difficult not to think of people in town, they are very close to you. We were where the rearguard was and from there you could see civilians suffering from Katiushas... a katiusha falling right next to you is scary. It is difficult to think that what you are doing is wrong, but this weapon is so, so... massive is not enough... it is a kind of doomsday, yes. You simply fill a whole area of a territory, you fill it with these bombs. Actually they are not so small and they cause tremendous damage, huge damage... it is a weapon to be used against mass targets, places bursting with people, with cars."

In spite of the warning, confirmed also by the United Nations, Israel has not handed over yet the detailed maps of the sites bombarded with cluster bombs, where there would be unexploded shells.

The United Nations have received some maps, but they are not detailed enough to locate this kind of bombs.
" In my case - the soldier tells us - I did my duty, it is done now, we can not go back, but those bombs are still there and somebody must take the responsability of it. I think that Israel, my country, should take responsability of the whole issue, should face what it did, it should give in the maps and do anything it can to help the situation. I do not understand why people still discuss about it. Those people are there, Lebanese people are not our enemy anymore... maybe some of them were a month ago, but they are not our enemies now, we are not at war against them. They are bound to hundreds of bombs that we have left there. I do not see why we should not take care of this matter, handing over maps, data and sending money. There are many things that can be done. I love my country and I think it is making a majotr mistake. It is like seeing somebody who is doing something incredibly stupid and not being able of stopping him. I think this country is doing things that will come back to us. Why don't we stop before the problem grows even bigger? Displaced people have to go back to their homes and everything is destroyed. Ok, it is our fault and we can say that it is their fault, however these are the consequences that we have to face."