A year after the guns fell largely silent along Lebanon’s southern frontier, the war is still killing — quietly, indiscriminately, and often unseen.

When the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect on Nov. 27, 2024, the country woke to a long-awaited calm. But the end of the bombardment did not mean the end of danger.

Daily Israeli violations persisted, and across the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs, a far more enduring threat lay buried beneath rubble, fields and roads: landmines and unexploded ordnance.

The scale of the bombardment Lebanon endured left behind a lethal mix of shell fragments, fuse remnants and unexploded artillery shells.

Much of this ammunition has become highly sensitive, capable of detonating with vibration or movement. For communities trying to return to normal life, it has turned routine activities — farming, construction, even clearing weeds — into potentially fatal acts.

Lebanon had once been close to turning a page. Before the clashes that erupted after October 2023, the country was nearing the disposal of most unexploded ordnance left over from the 2006 war, achieving a clearance rate of about 92 percent.

The latest conflict, however, dragged the country back to square one.

“All areas that were bombed by Israel are likely to contain unexploded ordnance and gallons of highly explosive TNT used to destroy buildings,” officials said.

Following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel that triggered the Gaza war, Hezbollah initiated limited operations against Israel’s north in solidarity with the Palestinian militant groups responsible for the assault.

Israel retaliated against Hezbollah’s attacks with escalating strikes, which included the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus.

Besides the significant degradation of Hezbollah, the primary consequence of the grinding conflict, which ended with a fragile ceasefire in November 2024, was the mass displacement of communities and the devastation of civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon.

Neither party has yet fulfilled its obligations under the US and French-brokered ceasefire deal, with Hezbollah failing to disarm and fully withdraw its fighters north of the Litani River and Israeli troops continuing to occupy five strategic hilltops on Lebanese territory.

The danger of landmines and explosive remnants lies in their unpredictability: some munitions can lie dormant for decades before suddenly exploding. It is a familiar tragedy in a country shaped by repeated wars.

Despite years of military surveys and clearance operations, unexploded ordnance, particularly old and internationally banned cluster munitions, continues to surface by chance — unearthed during excavation work, uncovered in farmland, or, in the worst cases, picked up by children.

After the 2006 war, Lebanon recorded more than four million cluster bombs dropped by Israel, including about one million that failed to explode. Two decades on, extremely costly removal operations are still ongoing.

In 2023 alone, the Lebanese Mine Action Center announced the destruction of 5,509 landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Established in 1998 and operating under the supervision of the Lebanese Army, the center works with international partners that provide technical, financial and field support. But the current challenge is unprecedented.

Today, unexploded ordnance is mixed between Israeli and Hezbollah munitions — all of it posing what officials describe as a silent, long-term threat.

A military source told Arab News that since the start of the war, army engineering units “have been working to clear and remove unexploded ordnance found in fields, homes and under rubble.”

Yet the true scale of contamination remains unknown. The Lebanese Army does not yet have a complete inventory of the ordnance scattered across the country.

“We need to wait until the survey of all areas affected by the war is completed to know the extent of the threat we are facing,” the source said, noting that access to some border villages is impossible “due to the Israeli occupation of some border points.”

Even so, the estimates are sobering. The military source put “the additional contamination after the recent aggression at around two million square meters,” describing areas littered with “aircraft bombs, rockets, artillery shells of various calibers, phosphorus shells, thermal balloons, cluster bombs, improvised explosive devices and traps, among others.”

“These are very dangerous to the safety of citizens,” the source said, because the sheer volume of debris “greatly hinders the clean-up operations, which require special equipment.”