Safia and Fatimah
Safia and Fatimah Hussein’s village was subject to heavy cluster bomb bombardment during the last 72 hours of conflict in Southern Lebanon.
Fatimah, 37 and Safia, 23, Southern Lebanon
Safia and Fatimah Hussein’s village was subject to heavy cluster bomb bombardment during the last 72 hours of conflict in Southern Lebanon.
While the cluster bombs have been cleared from inside their house, their olive groves and tobacco crops are littered with hundreds of unexploded cluster bomblets.
Safia:
“It was horrible for us, during the war we used to go out and gather drinking water from the well and people from nearby would also go and get food for us. But after the cluster bombardment I could not go outside for three days because bomblets were everywhere.
When they were firing the cluster bombs I felt like the house would drop. Many bomblets burst through the wall and came into the house and I started to panic. The attacks lasted for one and a half hours and then they cooled down for one hour and then they started again.
I heard the sound of each cluster bomb shell for five minutes, like popcorn. We never saw any military activity in this area. We were the targets, the civilians.
We had no water for one and a half days until Hezbollah came to clear so we could get access to water and food. Then after Hezbollah the army came to continue clearing roads and houses. But you see we still have so many bomblets here in our fields.
I am training to be a nurse at college, but I have had to take leave from my studies to help my mother pick what little remains of the tobacco crop. My brothers are too young to understand the threat from the unexploded submunitions so they are not allowed to help pick the remaining crop.”
Fatimah:
“We have lost our tobacco season and our olive season. We have been harvesting tobacco and growing olives from this land for our whole lives. Now because of the war and the cluster munitions we have lost everything.
We cannot plough our land and we cannot plant seeds for the winter.”
