In Lebanon, explosives litter the land long after Israel's wars

Tayr Harfa, Lebanon - In the southern Lebanese border village of Tayr Harfa, pink and yellow flowers bloomed through the vast expanse of rubble.

Villagers drove up to their homes and entered what remained of their living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms. A few others meandered through the village’s olive grove, checking on their decades-old trees. Some had been uprooted from the fertile soil, their roots left bare.

Grenade remnants littered the beautiful grove. An older man fingered an empty shell, but left another one, seemingly unexploded, warning the others to stay away. 

Landmines, cluster munitions, and other deadly explosives are scattered throughout Lebanon - the remnants of subsequent wars over 50 years. 

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982, after which it continued to occupy the south until May 2000. Six years later, during an intense 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel fired an estimated four million submunitions into Lebanon - one million of which failed to explode, according to the Mine Action Review’s 2024 report on cluster munitions left in the country. 

The most recent war in Lebanon, which erupted on 8 October 2023, has left another stock of unexploded ordnances throughout the country, with the southern region heavily contaminated once again.

'A vicious cycle' 

“It’s a vicious cycle of contamination, decontamination, contamination,” Habbouba Aoun, the director and founder of the Landmines Resource Centre - and a long-time demining advocate - told The New Arab. 

She spoke passionately, in her colourful office at the University of Balamand, in the mountain village of Souk el Gharb, in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon governorate. Since 1997, she has run the landmines centre from the university, where she also teaches public health. 

Aoun said that in 2023, Lebanon was nearly clear of landmines, with only about 13% of the contaminated land left. However, when the war erupted, demining efforts were halted and the country regressed “back to contamination”, she said. 

“Lebanon is still many years from completing mine clearance,” the Mine Action Review stated in its report. 

At the end of 2023, the Lebanese Mine Action Centre (LMAC) - part of the Lebanese army that heads the country’s demining activities — reported a total of 3,183,189 square metres of “Dangerous Areas”, which may contain mines and other explosive devices. 

While the majority of mines are in south Lebanon, there are also some on Lebanon’s northeastern border with Syria, due to the spill-over of the Syrian conflict in 2014, and in Mount Lebanon, placed by militias during Lebanon’s 15 year civil war (1975-1990), according to the Mine Action Review. 

Rigged furniture 

Due to decades of landmine awareness programs, advocacy, and the expansion of demining programmes within the Lebanese army, the number of victims has declined significantly since the 2000s, Aoun said.

Hundreds were killed or injured in just days after Israel’s withdrawal from the south in 2000 and following the 2006 war, she added. 

However, since 2023, she noted that there have only been seven victims of landmines and unexploded ordnances. Among the victims were Abbas Haidar and his two young daughters, from Tayr Harfa. 

In the southern border village, Tayr Harfa’s deputy mayor, Hussein Yousef, peered inside Haidar’s home, reminiscing on the family he knew closely. 

The building was severely damaged. The windows of the family’s ground-floor apartment were shattered, and an entire wall was torn off, revealing a bedroom where pink children's clothes were piled atop a small bed. 

After Israeli troops withdrew from the village on 7 January, the family would come frequently to their home, to collect their belongings and inspect the damages, Yousef said. 

Like other days, on 7 February, Haidar brought his three young daughters to their home in the village. But not long after they entered their home, an explosive rigged to their couch detonated, killing Haidar and two of his daughters, just 10 and 12 years old, Yousef recounted. 

The youngest with him that day, nine years old, was severely injured. 

“The girls were very kind and well-behaved. They looked a lot like their father,” said 35-year-old Hawra Atayeh, who lived down the street from Haidar and his girls. She was in Tayr Harfa with her relative, Nahil Atayeh, 62, visiting their home, which had been completely reduced to rubble. 

“When the [Israeli] soldiers left, we found everything destroyed, nothing was left. They bulldozed everything, even the olive trees,” Nahil told TNA. 

She also said she feared venturing into her backyard olive grove, worried about mines and other unexploded devices. 

“It’s terrifying,” Nahil said, “I’m worried there might be mines in the land that could harm us.”

Demining Lebanon

A group of international organisations, headed by the Lebanese army, are currently carrying out demining activities in Lebanon. 

The eruption of fighting in October 2023 brought demining to a halt for over a year, until the ceasefire went into effect on November 27, 2024. 

Mike Bonke, the country director for the Danish Church Aid (DCA) (one of the international organisations working on demining), told TNA their teams were working to clear minefields, cluster munitions, as well as unexploded artillery and aerial dropped munitions. 

Bonke referenced their efforts to destroy the minefields roughly 50-100 metres from the Blue Line, the unofficial demarcation between Israel and Lebanon. 

He said some of these minefields had been dispersed into “unknown locations” by heavily-armoured Israeli tanks when they crossed into Lebanon during the recent war.  

“On the left and the right, there are piles of soil, which contain mines that are in an area that is no longer mapped,” Bonke described. “It’s really dangerous,” he added. 

Also, after the recent war, he said his teams were seeing many unexploded ordnances, among them “kick outs” from strikes on Hezbollah’s weapons storehouses. 

“We’ll see a building that is completely collapsed, or burned out, because it was struck by the Israeli Air Force, but then around it are all types of munitions, sub-munitions, and unexploded ordnances,” Bonke said. "These are very dangerous for people returning to those areas.” 

'Very difficult to get funding' 

Lebanon’s demining programs are costly and depend heavily on international funding, leaving them vulnerable to aid cuts and pauses. 

“Lebanon continues to see a drop in clearance capacity, a reduction of international funding, and the absence of national funding to clear cluster munition remnants (CMR),” the Mine Action Review warned in its 2024 report. 

Bonke noted that it’s often “very difficult to get funding” for such expensive deming projects. He said that for just one of his teams (with 12 people), human resources-related costs, such as salaries, training, and insurance, amount to around $15,000 a month. 

Material costs for demining - like cars, ambulances, detectors and protective equipment - add up to roughly $50,000, Bonke estimated. 

Also, around 75% of funding for demining in Lebanon comes from the US, Bonke said, with US President Donald Trump’s January aid cuts unleashing a huge blow on the sector. 

Bonke added that while the DCA was able to find alternative sources of funding, most other deming agencies were forced to stop their work for two weeks, at a time when the “needs were significantly higher than before”. 

Meanwhile, few reconstruction estimates for Lebanon have incorporated deming costs. For instance, Bonke said the World Bank estimated the country’s recovery and reconstruction needs at $11 billion, but failed to adequately include the costs of demining.

“If we’re talking about rehabilitation and renovation of the south after this conflict, we need to have a significant component for demining,” he stated.

Support erodes for landmine victims 

While the demining activities have resumed, for now, hundreds of landmine victims have been left without support following Trump’s aid cuts. 

Aoun - who provides support to landmine victims through the Landmine Resource Centre - said that there are roughly 3,000 landmine victims in Lebanon, 500 to 1,000 of whom are in critical need of assistance. 

She said the Landmine Resource Centre normally managed to help roughly 200 victims yearly, providing them with prosthetics, psychological support, and other assistance through their “economic inclusion” program. 

However, following the aid cuts, their funding has dried up, and Aoun said the rehabilitation programs for landmine victims will have to come to a close, for now.

“This year, in 2025, we won’t be able to reach anyone, because I don’t see any funding coming,” she said. 

Other programs supporting landmine victims, such as the US-funded World Rehabilitation Fund (WRF), are also stopping in Lebanon following the aid cuts. The WRF was instrumental in organising demining efforts in the country, Aoun noted. 

The director of  WRF’s Lebanon programme, Nadim Karam, told TNA that their humanitarian rehabilitation assistance for persons with disabilities, which was expected to reach almost 6,000 people, including landmine survivors, was terminated in mid-February. 

“Currently, we do not have the resources to provide any form of material assistance,” he said. 

'It makes it possible to keep living'

Mohammad el-Hajj, 60, is one landmine victim who may lose his support. He was injured in 1992, after a landmine left from the civil war exploded in his footsteps. 

After undergoing over 30 surgeries, his leg was amputated, he told TNA. El-Hajj received two prosthetic legs from the Landmine Resource Centre, as well as support with medicine and bandages.

“The stop of aid will have a really, huge negative impact,” he said. “Not just on me, but on many others with disabilities who are benefiting from it.” 

He noted that his prosthesis alone cost roughly $2,500, which he said he would never have been able to afford, even when he was “working two jobs”. 

Because of the rehabilitation support he received, el-Hajj said he has managed to compete in multiple marathons, winning three gold medals. 

“We [depend on the support] to get to work, to focus on our tasks, to be what we aspire to be,” el-Hajj continued. “It makes it possible for us to keep living - if it’s halted, it will definitely create a big problem.” 

Hanna Davis is a freelance journalist reporting on politics, foreign policy, and humanitarian affairs.

Follow her on Twitter: @hannadavis341