You have to love the Italians. They love their food, and they’re not ones to let a few thousand cluster bombs keep farmers out of their fields.
During the fighting in Southern Lebanon between Israeli forces and Hezbollah’s military, a great many mines were installed and a great many cluster bombs were dropped on Lebanese farmland. Cluster bombs are horrible little things dropped from planes that break up in the air and distribute little mine-like explosive devices all over the place.
According to an article by Mohammed Zaatari in the Lebanon Daily Star, the Italian forces stationed in southern Lebanon cleared more than 7,000 square meters of farmland in Sidon. This dangerous work was performed by ”the Italian battalion of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).”
Zaatari writes that UNIFIL’s Sector West Commander General Carmello Di Cicco, who oversaw the de-mining of the fields, turned the land back over to the farmers this week and and held a big party — again, you have to love Italians — in a field that had formerly been chock full of nasty little explosives in the city of Hiniyyeh.
The Italian mine-clearing experts have been very busy since the end of fighting. They’ve already cleared a whopping “60,000 square meters of land, including 3,100 unexploded cluster bombs.”
That’s a lot of bombs.
The party included a demonstration by UNIFIL’s Italian and Slovenian battalions “of explosives detectors at the southern town of Shamaa.”
“UNIFIL strongly believes peace could be established in the south and guarantees that its work will continue on the same level of professionalism,” UNIFIL Force Commander Major General Claudio Graziano said at the event.
Photo courtesy of Julien Harneis, via Flickr