Beirut - Lack of funds is threatening the work of teams working with the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) in southern Lebanon to clear Israeli cluster bombs which were dropped over the area in the July 2006 war.

UNMACC spokeswoman Dayla Farran said some of the teams "will have to stop because the donors have failed to come up with a promised 4.7 million dollars needed to fund the program in 2008."

"A large number of the clearance teams will be stopping by the end of this month if funds are not ready before that," she said.

UNMACC has been clearing thousands of unexploded cluster bomblets left over after Israel's war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Israeli forces dropped nearly 1 million cluster bombs over 42 million square meters of southern Lebanon.

Hundreds of thousands failed to explode. They continue to kill and maim civilians 2 years after the war.

Since the war ended, 27 civilians have been killed and 234 wounded by unexploded ordnance, mostly cluster munitions, while 13 bomb disposal experts have been killed and 39 wounded, Farran said.

Farran expressed fears that a reduction in the teams would lead to a higher accident rate. "This will increase the chances of civilian casualties, slow economic recovery in the south, and slow down national cluster clearance efforts," Farran warned.

To date, UNMACC has identified 1,056 cluster bomb-strike locations, spanning an area of over 42 million square meters. Many of these munitions were dropped around private homes and agricultural land.

"Agriculture constitutes one of the main factors driving the economies of the people of the south," Farran said.

Many had already lost two or three harvesting seasons, she said, adding that the threat of poverty meant "nothing will stop them from using their land."

"It will be horrible to have to go and tell people that because we cannot continue our work, they shouldn't use their (uncleared) land when you know that in fact, they probably will," Farran said.

Financial problems are not the only the problem facing the teams.

Farran said the "biggest obstacle was Israel's refusal to hand over "cluster bomb-strike data" to the UN that details the location, target, type and quantities of cluster munitions littering South Lebanon.

In May 2007, 107 countries adopted the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which is to be signed in Oslo on December 3.

A quarterly UNMACC report published in mid-April said it "intended to systematically clear an additional 10 million square metres of cluster-munitions-contaminated land" in 2008.

The aim was to ensure that a large, donor funded, clearance program was no longer required by the end of that year.. (dpa)