Injured soldiers come home

30 January 2007

The two ‘Blue Helmets’ who were injured Monday during a bomb disposal mission in the area of Tebnine in the South of Lebanon were brought home on a military flight.

The two soldiers arrived at the military airport of Melsbroek at 9:45 pm on Tuesday where they were greeted by the Belgian Defence minister, Andre Flahaut.

Both were operators of the Service d’Enlèvement et de Destruction d’Engins explosives, SEDEE, (Belgium’s bomb squad). They were injured on Monday while defusing a land mine. The explosive blew up and projectiles injured the arm of one and the foot of the other.

This is the third incident of this kind since 400 Belgian peace-keepers were deployed in Lebanon last September under the banner of the UNIFIL.

Belgium’s bomb squad has defused and destroyed over 12,000 charged explosives in Lebanon; most were bombs which failed to go off during Israel’s air-strikes.

Israel dropped hundreds of thousands bombs during the 34 days of air-strikes against Hezbollah last July and August. An estimated 40 percent of these bombs did not blow up and the UNIFIL usually defuses the explosive charges based on the requests of local farmers.

Subject: Belgian news