TYRE, Lebanon • Israel dropped cluster bombs on at least 170 villages and other places in south Lebanon during its 34-day war with Hezbollah guerrillas, a senior United Nations de-mining official said yesterday.

The bomblets that failed to explode are now a deadly trap for civilians who stayed in the south or who fled and are now returning, some to find their homes or workplaces pounded to rubble by Israeli air strikes and artillery. The devices are known to have killed eight people and wounded at least 25, including several children, since a truce took hold on Aug. 14, said Tekimiti Gilbert, operations chief of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon.

“Up to now there are 170 confirmed cluster bomb strikes in south Lebanon,” he said in the southern port of Tyre.

“It’s a huge problem. There are obvious dangers with children, people, cars. People are tripping over these things.” Gilbert said he had “no doubt” that Israel had deliberately hit built-up areas with cluster bombs, in violation of international law which states that such munitions must not be used in areas where there are civilians.

“These cluster bombs were dropped in the middle of villages,” he said. Israel denies using the weapons illegally and accuses Hezbollah of firing rockets into Israel from civilian areas. Gilbert said six assessment teams had been finding 30 new cluster bomb sites a day, mostly south of the Litani river, about 20km from Israel’s border. Large numbers had also been found further north, around Nabatiyeh and Hasbaya.

Gilbert said it could take “up to 12 months or more” to rid the south of the Israeli bomblets, some of which are designed to knock out tanks, others to kill or maim people over a wide area. Some are small, black and cylindrical, easy to overlook and to detonate. Others are round and can look like dusty rocks.

Gilbert said four clearance teams from Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British non-governmental organisation, had already found and made safe more than 1,000 cluster bombs in the past six days—usually with controlled explosions. Another 13 clearance teams from MAG and a British firm will start work soon, along with two from Sweden. Lebanese army teams are also in action, as are Hezbollah members, Gilbert said. “Hezbollah have picked up a large number of these bombs and put them into boxes and got them away from the children.” “It’s not the approved method, but the risk is such that if something is not done, people will die,” Gilbert said. “You can’t fault them, they are putting their lives at risk,” he said, but added that while such unsystematic collection methods could clear the most visible cluster bombs, they could make it harder to find the less obvious ones.

Comparing the use of cluster bombs in other conflicts, Gilbert said that Iraq and Afghanistan were huge countries, so most bomblets had fallen in deserts or unoccupied areas. “But Lebanon is small and the south is even smaller. To have these cluster bombs dropped in such a small, confined space and in the numbers they have been used is lethal.”

Prepare for Iranian attack: Israel minister

Meanwhile, a cabinet minister and former Mossad spy warned yesterday Israel should prepare for a ballistic missile attack from arch enemy Iran. "Iran has threatened to attack us with its ballistic missiles and we should prepare behind our lines and civilians for such an attack," Pensioner Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan said in an interview broadcast by Israeli public radio. Eitan, a member of the security cabinet and a former spy for Mossad, the country's overseas intelligence agency, said the authorities needed to "refurbish or prepare numerous shelters."

The director of the prime minister's office told the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper that by next Sunday he intended to present Ehud Olmert with a series of proposals to prepare the homefront for any future war.

Raanan Dinur made the remarks during a tour of the north, which was pounded by more than 4,000 rockets fired by the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hezbollah during Israel's 34-day day war in Lebanon, killing 41 Israeli civilians. One of Iran's top clerics warned last week that if the Islamic republic is attacked by the United States and Israel, it will retaliate with ballistic missile strikes against Tel Aviv. Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be "wiped off the map" and called several times or the Jewish state to be moved somewhere else on the planet.

Iran is Israel's public enemy number one and has never recognised the Jewish state.