'The kids went to play, then there was this explosion . . .'

RAED MOKALED lost his son, Ahnad, on his fifth birthday, while at a celebration in a park in Nabateh, southern Lebanon, in 1999.

"The accident happened on the 12th of February that year," says Mokaled, sitting outside the conference hall yesterday morning.

"We took him from school to make a small celebration for him. After we arrived and got ready with the cake, the kids went to play for a bit.

"Then there was this explosion and I heard my wife scream: 'This is my son'.

"I think she must have felt something, because there were many people rushing over to where the explosion was, to see what happened.

"My other son, Adam, said he saw him pick up something like a brightly coloured bottle and it exploded. Of course this is very attractive for a child to pick up.

"I ran over to pick him up. I had been a volunteer in the Lebanese Red Cross but my mind went blank. I forgot all my training. He was very badly injured.

"We rushed him to hospital in my car and he was moved by ambulance because he was critical. But he died four hours later in the operating room."

The cluster munition had been dropped in the area by the Israeli army, he says.

"Maybe in 1982, maybe 1978."

Asked about the impact on his family, he says Adam has suffered epileptic-type fits since, while his wife "has something like paranoia. She is afraid of many things.

"No one can imagine what it's is like - the pain, of taking your little son to a public park to make a celebration and to bring him home dead.

"No one can imagine it."

He says at first he was "very angry".

"But then I thought I could do two things. I could go and fight but that is not my idea to have a fight. So I decided to help stop this happening.

"Maybe I protect some other child. A child comes into this world to enjoy life, to explore everything around them.

"So we, grown people, have to make a clean, clear world for them."

Though he still works as an optician in Lebanon, Mokaled has been working with the Cluster Munitions Coalition since he lost his son. "If there could be a convention against cluster bombs that would be very good. That is what we must have."