Surrounded with the destruction and deadly war leftovers, Lebanese children lost the `Eid joy. (Reuters)

SIDDIQIN, Lebanon — The 34-day Israeli offensive that devastated Lebanon has cast a pall over `Eid Al-Fitr festive mood, which was overtaken by ruins, fears and unexploded bomblets carpeting the south.

"No one has any work here," Ahmed Azzam, mayor of the southern village of Siddiqin, sadly told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday, October 22, the first day of `Eid for Lebanese Shiites.

Israel's bombardment of the village during its July-August blitz completely destroyed more than 400 homes and severely damaged 700 others, says Azzam.

This year the village, home to 6,200 people, that usually lives from tobacco and olive cultivation does not feel much like celebrating, living instead hand-to-mouth from aid donations.

Adding insult to an injury, the Israeli bomblets have even brought efforts to rebuild the village and to revive the economic state to a halt.

"In order to get rid of the mines and go back to work in the fields, some people have taken to shooting at the bombs to make them go off," Azzam says.

In this village alone, a Lebanese soldier and two young men have been wounded by the deadly leftovers of the war. Some 21 people have been killed and over 100 wounded by the bomblets.

Nevertheless, south villagers still have another battle to fight with the winter not far behind.

Their main concern is to fix the gaping holes in their houses' walls and roofs half destroyed by the fighting.

Israel launched its wide-scale offensive on July 12 on the claim of seeking the release of two soldiers taken prisoner by Hizbullah in a cross-border operation to exchange with Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

Up to 1,200 Lebanese civilians, a third of whom were children, have been killed in the wide-scale blitz which left the country's infrastructure in tatters.

Vanishing Smile

Desperately clinging to the vanishing `Eid spirit, Lebanese children fight the gloomy mood with every possible way.

"Mummy doesn't have any money to organize a party, so I've decided to find some," said nine-year-old Mustapha who is determined to celebrate `Eid, that is usually accompanied by new clothes and presents, no matter what.

Mustapha waits for the scrap metal merchant to come so he can sell him his crop of shell fragments recovered from the rubble of his southern Lebanese village.

He can sell his 10 kilos of twisted metal to the scrap merchant for 3,000 Lebanese pounds (two dollars).

Wearing long johns and flip-flops, Mustapha sifts through the debris of concrete and shattered household objects under which unexploded bomblets still lie concealed.

Neither Mustapha nor his three brothers and sisters have gone back to school. His family fled the village on July 14 after the start of the Israeli offensive.

On their return, they found their subsistence crop of tobacco destroyed and now hardly dare harvest their olives because of the risk of unexploded bombs.

Mustapha's mother, Iman Daher, is trying in vain to prevent her children scurrying off into the dangerous ruins.

Only the immediate surroundings of their house have been given the all-clear by the Lebanese army, says Iman.

"I told him not to go off like that," Mustapha's father, Ali, expressed similar fears.

"Yesterday I gave him a clout because he brought back a mine as big as my fist."

The head of the Israeli army's Rocket Unit revealed in a letter to Defense Minister Emir Peretz — obtained by the daily Haaretz on October 22, — that the Israeli army had rained Lebanon with more than one million cluster bombs and used internationally banned weapons like phosphorous shells and imprecise weaponry during its 34-day war.

The cluster bombs contain hundreds of small but lethal bomblets, which are dispersed over a large area. Those that do not explode on impact turn into lethal anti-personnel mines.

The UN children's fund (UNICEF) says one third of the casualties caused by cluster bombs since the ceasefire in the 34-day Israeli blitz have been children, who often mistake the lethal devices for toys.