BEIRUT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- From the balcony of a mosque in Lebanon's southern town of Abbasiya, a group of townspeople have been anxiously monitoring their orchards for two decades, as the land was planted with mines by the Israeli army before its withdrawal in 2000.

Unfortunately, Lebanese authorities failed to clean the orchards and spare the town's residents from the fears of mines.

Mohammad Shehab, a social activist in the town, told Xinhua that the minefield, which is near the barbed wire border fence separating Lebanon and Israel, has an area of about two square kilometers and contains about 5,000 mines and cluster bombs.

The explosion of mines had killed a farmer, a member of the engineering department in the Lebanese army, and wounded three other civilians, in addition to damaging the mosque and several houses and killing many livestock and dozens of wild animals, he said.

"People in Abbasiya hope to clean the town's minefield and the rest of the fields scattered in various southern regions to avoid other incidents and return lands to their owners," he explained.

Since the year 2000, the Lebanese army, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers as well as local and international associations, have cleaned hundreds of fields in southern Lebanon, but lots of minefields are difficult to discover as they are buried in the dirt, Nasser Abu Latif, program coordinator for victims of mines at the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs, told Xinhua.

Abu Latif explained that the areas cleared from mines range between 100 to 120 square kilometers, or about 80 percent of total areas planted with mines, and the remaining areas are expected to be demined through a plan developed in 2021 by the Lebanese army's National Bureau for Mine Clearance in coordination with the United Nations and international donors, for clearing mines and cluster bombs within a five-year period.

"The plan aims to expedite the elimination of the imminent danger caused by mines and cluster bombs by using modern equipment in excavation and intensifying efforts for removing and detonating bombs," Abu Latif said.

The number of associations participating in mine action in southern Lebanon dropped from 20 to 6 this year, given the economic crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak, but there are still 17 field teams working in excavation and clearance under the supervision of the National Bureau for Mine Clearance, and they are expected to complete their task by the end of 2026, according to Abu Latif.

For his part, Jihad Olayan, an activist who raises awareness about the dangers of mines and cluster bombs, urged the international community to support the mine-clearing plan and help victims with disabilities to overcome their ordeal financially and morally.

He stated that the Israeli army had targeted about 1,061 geographical points in 155 towns with cluster bombs during its 2006 war against Lebanon.

Notably, the Chinese peacekeepers played a great role over the past years in assisting the UNIFIL in demining activities in southern Lebanon.

According to estimates by the UNIFIL, since China deployed its peacekeeping force in Lebanon in 2006 and until mid-2019, more than 12,000 mines and various unexploded ordnances have been discovered and eliminated by Chinese teams.

The Lebanese National Bureau for Mine Clearance states that the victims of Israeli cluster bombs and mines reached 2,340, including 914 victims and 1,426 injured, most of whom are civilians, including members of the Lebanese army and workers in demining teams. Enditem

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