The top humanitarian official at the United Nations has lashed out at Israel for unleashing a deluge of cluster bombs in the final hours of its invasion of Lebanon. The official, UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, says the cluster bombs have affected large residential and farming areas and could be on the ground for years.

• UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland: “Colleagues in the UN Mine Action Co-Ordination Centre have undertaken assessments of nearly 85 per cent of bombed areas in South Lebanon have identified 359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. What’s shocking and I would say to me completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution, when we really knew there would be an end of this.”