DUBAI, 23 December 2006 — Emirati engineering units have finished clearing mines, defusing bombs and removing cluster bomblets and other types of unexploded munitions in Arnon and Qal’at Shqeef villages in Southern Lebanon, the UAE Program to Support and Rebuild Lebanon announced yesterday.

The program is an initiative launched earlier this year by UAE President Sheikh Khalifa ibn Zayed Al-Nahayan.

The directorate of the program handed over the cleared lands to the mayor of the Arnon in a ceremony attended by representatives of United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC), the Lebanese Army’s National Mine-Removal Bureau and the Ministry of Antiquities, the WAM news agency reported.

Lebanese officials and locals praised the UAE’s demining efforts to save the lives of local people and the historical Shqeef Citadel (Qal’at Shqeef).

Work now is under way to clear areas south of Littani River and along the Lebanese-Israeli border of unexploded ordnance.

As part of the UAE support to United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) which is carrying out a large-scale de-mining operation to clear mines, defuse and remove cluster bomblets and other types of unexploded munitions in Southern Lebanon, the UAE program recently signed agreements with two British companies, ArmourGroup and Bactec, to carry out a mine clearance operation along with the engineering personnel of the UAE Armed Forces.

Cluster bomblets are present everywhere in and around contaminated villages, gardens, orchards and trees, rooftops and rubble are peppered with seemingly innocuous canisters that turn out to be cluster bombs.

Some 750 contaminated sites north of Littani River have been identified so far.

Unexploded sub-munitions, duds that fail to detonate on impact but are still live and at risk of exploding, are estimated by the UN between hundreds of thousands to over a million.

More than 2.1 million cluster bomblets have been launched or dropped by Israeli forces during the last three days of war, according to UN sources.

The process of identifying contaminated sites has to be accelerated and finalized before the winter season because bomblets and other dangerous ordnance can be displaced and swept by rainwater and flash currents to other sites or even buried underground for ages.

According to a recent UN report, the number of unexploded bombs and other ordnance in Southern Lebanon is higher than in Iraq or Kosovo.