Beirut  -Two Lebanese brothers were wounded Wednesday by the explosion of a cluster bomb left behind from the July 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, police said.

Abbas Awali, 13, and Hussein Awali, 10, were injured while gathering wood in a field near the southern village of Tulin, the police said.

During the 33-day war on Lebanon, Israeli jets dropped over 1 million cluster munitions on southern Lebanon, around 40 per cent of which failed to detonate on impact, according to the United Nations.

Some 300 Lebanese civilians have been killed or maimed by cluster bombs sinc ethe end of the war, according to the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre. Children, who usually mistake the bomblets for toys, registered the higher number of victims. (dpa)