Israeliattackson Lebanon and Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel during the first three weeks of the latest Israel-Lebanon escalation may amount to serious violations of international humanitarian law, the United Nations has warned in a new report released in Geneva on Friday.
Almost uninterrupted exchanges of fire have continued along the border since 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in response to US–Israeli strikes on Iran. Israel replied with a large-scale offensive that has since killed more than2,400 peoplein Lebanon, according to the UN, and pushed its forces into a belt of Lebanese territory that they continue to hold along the frontier under what officials describe as security operations.
The UN human rights office said its assessment focused on the first three weeks of the Israel–Lebanon flare-up, zeroing in on attacks that struck populated areas and residential buildings on both sides of the border. Investigators have been examining how targets were selected, what kinds of weapons were used and whether civilians were adequately warned before strikes.
Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said the agency had documented several Israeli strikes that hit, and in some cases destroyed, multi-storey residential buildings in Lebanon, 'killing entire families.' Such incidents, he said, may amount to 'serious violations of international humanitarian law', the framework that governs how wars must be fought.
One of the clearest examples cited by the report is an air raid on 8 March in the town of Sir el-Gharbiyeh, in Lebanon's Nabatieh governorate. An Israeli strike levelled a multi-storey residential building there, killing at least 13 civilians sheltering inside.
The dead included five women, five men, two boys and a girl, according to the UN's count. No information was provided in the report about any military presence in or near the building, leaving the lawfulness of the attack in severe doubt.
The UN also flagged what it called 'ineffective warnings' given to residents before some strikes in Lebanon, and noted that in other cases no warning was issued at all. Under international humanitarian law, parties to a conflict are obliged, where circumstances permit, to warn civilians of impending attacks so they can flee or seek shelter. When warnings are absent or meaningless, the threshold for potential illegality is sharply lowered.
Pope Leo XIV has revealed he carries a photo with him of a Muslim boy who was killed during Israel's invasion of Lebanon.Speaking on the plane back from his Africa trip, the pontiff said the US-Israeli war on Iran has caused an entire population of innocent people to suffer.pic.twitter.com/eHCYxYFUW9
Hezbollah did not escape scrutiny. The UN report concluded that the group had fired unguided rockets into Israel that lacked the precision necessary to reliably hit military targets.
Instead, these weapons damaged buildings and civilian infrastructure. That pattern, the UN said, also likely violated international humanitarian law, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Source: International Business Times UK
