Scientists suspect Israeli arms used in South contain radioactive matter

By Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff

08/21/06 "Daily Star" -- -- MARJAYOUN: Mohammad Ali Qobeissi, a member of the National Council for Scientific Research, said on Sunday that a crater caused by an Israeli munition in Khiam contained "a high degree of unidentified radioactive materials." Qobeissi, along with Ibrahim Rashidi from the Faculty of Sciences at the Lebanese University, have inspected the crater - which is 3 meters deep and has a diameter of 10 meters - in the Jlahiyyeh quarter in Khiam, with a Geiger-Muller radioactivity counter and nuclear material detector.

"A team from the council will test a sample from the crater in order to find out what kinds of radioactive materials it contains," Qobeisi told The Daily Star.

He added that the Israeli weapons launched on Khiam and the neighboring areas of South Lebanon "probably contained a high level of uranium."

The scientific team doubted, however, that the dust caused by these weapons was likely to contain the kind of radioactive materials which would later lead to cancers.

Copyright © 2006, The Daily Star.