Lebanese still homeless, crisis not over

They also warned of a possible food crisis because of the conflict's impact on local harvests but said it would reduce an appeal for emergency funds made at the start of the war.

Lebanon's government has said 97 percent of the 900,000 to one million people who fled fighting between Israel and Hezbollah had returned to their towns following an August 14 truce.

But the UNHCR refugee agency in hard-hit south Lebanon, where many villages were severely damaged by Israeli ground and air attacks, said a third had found their homes uninhabitable.

"Only 60-70 percent have actually returned to their homes. The rest are staying with host families or in nearby villages," UNHCR spokeswoman Reem Alsalem said.

"The main problem is their houses are destroyed or it's too dangerous because of unexploded ordnance. I don't see any large changes in the situation any time soon." UN explosive experts have confirmed 249 Israeli cluster bomb strikes, and unspent bomblets have killed eight and wounded at least 38 since the shooting stopped.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused Israel of violating international law by targeting civilian areas. The Jewish state says its attacks were directed at stopping Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Israel said it has passed maps to the UN force UNIFIL which showed where its exploded ordnance might lie. "We did this in an attempt to minimise casualties among the Lebanese population," an Israeli army spokesman said.

The five-week war claimed 1,200 lives, mostly civilians, in Lebanon. At least 157 Israelis, most of them soldiers, died.

CRISIS STILL LOOMS
Emergency Relief Coordinator David Shearer said the U.N.'s relief agencies would reduce an appeal for $150 million in donations for emergency activities ahead of an August 31 donors' conference in Sweden because the end of fighting meant the focus should shift towards longer-term rebuilding.

"The flash appeal was launched in an entirely different situation," he said. "We're now looking at a figure of around $110 million ... It might be a little more or a little less."