http://hrw.org/reports/2006/lebanon0806/
Too much material to copy here, here's just some quotes:
Israel/Lebanon: End Indiscriminate Strikes on Civilians
Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes
On July 16, an Israeli aircraft fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing 11 members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five and seven.
(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.
Killing of Four Brazilian-Lebanese Civilians in Srifa, July 13
On two occasions, the IDF killed civilians in the village Srifa, located twenty-five kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border. The first attack on July 13 killed four Brazilian-Lebanese dual nationals. On July 19, another strike killed nineteen people (see below).
The first took place at about 4 a.m. on July 13, around the same time as other air strikes on the villages of Dweir and Baflay (see below). Fatima Musa, a Srifa resident, described the strike to Human Rights Watch:
First they hit a school building at night, from Wednesday to Thursday, starting at around 3:30 to 4 a.m. Then, they hit the house just behind us. We didn?t hear the airplanes, we just heard the rocket. We were sleeping and woke up when the house lit up from the explosions. My son was shivering with fear.13
The air strike hit a home in the Ain neighborhood of Srifa, demolishing the home and killing the family inside.
According to three witnesses, the four persons killed in the first strike on Srifa were all Brazilian-Lebanese dual nationals who had come to Srifa less than one month before to spend their summer vacation in the village.14 The witnesses identified the dead as Akil Merhi, 33; his wife, Ahlam Merhi, 25; their son, Abd?el Hadi Merhi, 8; and their daughter, Fatima Merhi, 4. Because the family was only vacationing in Lebanon and normally resided in Brazil, it is unlikely that their adult members were involved in Hezbollah activities. The witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch also denied there was a Hezbollah presence or fighting in the area at the time of the attack
There was no Hezbollah activity around the home when the second bomb struck, the villagers said.
Killing of Thirteen Civilians in Dweir, July 13
On Thursday, July 13, at about 4:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes struck the home of Shi?a cleric Sheikh `Adil Mohammed Akash, killing the cleric and eleven members of his family. Sheikh Akash was an Iranian-educated cleric and is believed to have been affiliated with Hezbollah, although there is no indication that he took part in hostilities or had a commanding role, either of which might have made him a legitimate military target.
The first missile demolished the two-story home in the village of Dweir, located halfway between Saida and Tyre, while a second missile fired minutes later failed to explode. The sheikh and his family had returned to the home just twenty minutes before the strike, an eyewitness who lived nearby told Human Rights Watch.17 The strike killed Sheikh `Adil Mohammed Akash; his wife, Rabab Yasin, 39; and ten of their children: Mohammed Baker Akash, 18; Mohammed Hassan Akash, 7; Fatima Akash, 17; `Ali Rida Akash, 12; Ghadir Akash, 10; Zeinab Akash, 13; Sara Akash, 5; Batul Akash, 4; Nour el-Huda Akash, 2; and Safa? Akash, 2 months. The family?s Sri Lankan maid, whose name is not known, also died.18
There was no evidence of Hezbollah military activity in or around the home, and the village of Dweir is too far from the Israeli border (about 40 kilometers) to serve as an effective launching site for Hezbollah rockets.
International law permits the targeting of military commanders in the course of armed conflict, provided that such attacks otherwise comply with the laws that protect civilians. Political leaders, however, are civilians; they are not legitimate military targets. The only exception to this rule is if they assume a military command or participate directly in military hostilities, which would then render them combatants.
Even if Israel believed Sheikh Akash was a legitimate military target because of his possible involvement in Hezbollah military activities (of which Human Rights Watch has no evidence), Israel should have taken into account the likely civilian casualties of attacking him in his home in determining whether the military gain of attacking him there outweighed the civilian harm. In this case, the death of at best one possible Hezbollah member cost the lives of twelve civilians, nine of them children.
Killing of Four Civilians, Including a U.S.-Lebanese National, in Bent Jbeil, July 15
At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 15, an Israeli airplane fired at a three-story civilian home in Bent Jbeil, a large town near Lebanon?s border with Israel. The strike collapsed the home, killing 80-year-old Haj Abu Naji Mrouj, and his 40-year-old daughter whose name is unknown to Human Rights Watch, and trapping their bodies under the rubble. Hashem Kazan, 16, who was wounded in the second strike while trying to recover the bodies (see below), told Human Rights Watch that Haj Abu Naji Mrouj had nothing to do with Hezbollah. ?Haj Abu Naji was not Hezbollah; he was an old man who didn?t work anymore,? he said. ?The Haj just lived in his house with his daughter.?23 The bodies of Haj Abu Naji and his daughter remain buried in the rubble of their demolished home. Another witness denied that there was any Hezbollah presence at or near the home at the time of the attack.24
While villagers were attempting to dig the bodies out of the rubble, an Israeli warplane fired a second missile at the rubble and the rescuers at around 1:15 p.m., killing two male civilians, including 30-year-old Bilal Hreish, a U.S.-Lebanese dual national. Hashem Kazan told Human Rights Watch how he was wounded during the second attack as he worked to recover the bodies:
There was no Hezbollah at the house when I went there, and there was no fighting taking place in the village?there was no one but civilians. The civil defense was there to help us [recover the bodies]. Originally, there were about fifty people at the rubble trying to help, but then we were only about ten. We were on the rooftop of the house when we were hit. I didn?t hear anything, I just heard the explosion.25
Hashem Kazan told Human Rights Watch that at least six were wounded in the second air strike, including two sons of Haj Abu Naji Mrouj.26
Killing of At Least 28 Civilians in Qana, July 30
Around 1 a.m. on July 30, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at the village of Qana. Among the homes struck was a three-story building in which sixty-three members of two extended families had sought shelter. The home collapsed and killed at least twenty-eight people. Sixteen children are among the dead.
Initial reports after the attack put the death toll at fifty-four, which was based on a register of sixty-three persons who had sought shelter in the building that was struck, and the rescue teams? ability to locate only nine survivors. Human Rights Watch learned after a visit to Qana that at least twenty-two people escaped the basement, and twenty-eight are confirmed dead. The fate of the remaining thirteen people who hid in the basement is unknown, and village representatives believe they remain buried in the debris.
The civilians from the two families had sought shelter in the house because it was one of the larger buildings in the area and had a reinforced basement, according to the deputy mayor of the town, Dr. Issam Matuni.80
According to Muhammed Mahmoud Shalhoub, a 61-year-old farmer who was in the basement during the attack, sixty-three members of the Shalhoub and Hashim families went to hide in three ground-floor rooms of the three-story building when the first missile landed in the village around 6 p.m. on July 29, he said. He explained how, around 1 a.m. on July 30, after heavy bombing in the village, an Israeli missile struck the ground floor of the home:
It felt like someone lifted the house. The ground floor of the house is 2.5 meters high. When the first strike hit, it hit below us and the whole house lifted, the rocket hit under the house. I was sitting by the door?it got very dusty and smoky ?and we were all in shock. I was not injured and found myself [thrown] outside. There was a lot of screaming inside. When I tried to go back in I couldn?t see because of the smoke. I started pushing people out, whomever I could find.
Five minutes later, another air strike came and hit the other side of the building, behind us. After the second strike, we could barely breathe and we couldn?t see anything. There were three rooms in the house where people were hiding [on the ground floor]. After the first strike, a lot of earth was pushed up into the rooms. We only managed to find some people in the first room.81
Shalhoub vigorously denied that any Hezbollah fighters were present in or around the home when the attack took place. All four roads to Qana village had been cut by Israeli bombs, he said, which would have made it difficult if not impossible for Hezbollah to move rocket launchers into the village.
?If they [the IDF] really saw the rocket launcher, where did it go?? Shalhoub said. ?We showed Israel our dead, why don?t the Israelis show us the rocket launchers??
Ghazi `Aydaji, another Qana villager, who rushed to the house when it was hit at 1 a.m., gave an account consistent with Shalhoub?s. He and others removed a number of people from the building after the first strike, he said, but they could remove no one else after the second strike hit five minutes later. ?If Hezbollah was firing near the house, would a family of over 50 people just sit there?? he said to Human Rights Watch.82
Human Rights Watch researchers visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, and did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. None of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers, and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home around the time that it was hit. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from in or near the building.
After the incident, Israeli government expressed regret over the civilian deaths and said it would conduct an investigation. Various officials said that Hezbollah fighters were to blame for firing rockets near the building, and the IDF had warned civilians to leave.83
An unnamed senior Israeli air force commander said the military hit the building with a precision-guided bomb because Hezbollah had fired rockets from the area. When asked how the military knew about the rockets but not the presence of civilians in the building, the commander said the IDF was ?capable of detecting missile launches because they are very dynamic,? while the civilians were not seen because they had been hiding in the building for some days.84 His opinion contradicts the testimony of Muhammed Mahmoud Shalhoub, above, who said the families went into the house when the aerial attack began around 6 p.m. on July 29.
On August 1, one of Israel?s top military correspondents, reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz that, while the Israeli Air Force investigation into the incident was ongoing, ?questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.? He elaborated that the IDF had changed its original story and that ?it now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.?85
As of August 2, the IDF had not publicized any conclusions from its internal military probe and Human Rights Watch continues to call for an international investigation into the incident.
According to lists from the Lebanese Red Cross and Tyre hospital, the confirmed dead as of August 1 are: Husna Hashem, 75; Mahdi Mahmud Hashem, 68; Ibrahim Hashem, 65; Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 55; `Afaf al-Zabad, 45; Nabila `Ali Amin Shalhoub, 40; Tayssir `Ali Shalhoub, 39; Khadije `Ali Yussef, 31; Maryam Hassan Mohsen, 30; Lina Muhammad Mahmud Shalhoub, 30; `Ola Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 25; `Ali Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 17; Hussein Ahmad Hashem, 12; Houra? Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 12; `Ali Muhammad Kassem Shalhoub, 10; Ja`far Mahmud Hashem, 10; Qassem Samih Shalhoub, 9; Yahya Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 9; Qassem Muhammad Shalhoub, 7; Raqiteh Mahmud Shalhoub, 7; Ibrahim Ahmad Hashem, 7; Yussef Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 6; Zaynab Muhammad `Ali Amin Shalhoub, 6; Fatima Muhammad Hashem, 4; Ali Ahmad Hashem, 3; Zahra? Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 2; Abbas Ahmad Hashem, 9 months; Roukaya Mohammad Hashem, age unknown.
Attacks on Fleeing Civilians
Israel?s military operations between July 12 and July 27 trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians in southern Lebanese villages, including tens of thousands of dual nationals and foreigners who were vacationing in Lebanon at the time. The roads in many parts of southern Lebanon became too dangerous to travel, with daily strikes on civilian vehicles trying to flee.
Around July 15, the Israeli army began ordering villagers from the south to evacuate immediately, dropping leaflets, using speaker systems, making radio broadcasts, and even sending messages in Arabic on mobile phones. On the morning of July 15, for example, an Arabic speaker from the Israeli side of the border used a loudspeaker to tell the villagers of Marwahin to leave their homes within two hours (twenty-one of the villagers were killed that same day when an Israeli weapon struck their car, as discussed below).86 Over the following days, Israeli officials also called many village leaders on their mobile phones with a recorded message, ordering them to leave their villages immediately and to head north of the Litani River. The message warned them not to travel on motorcycles, vans, or trucks.87 On July 28, Israel again ordered civilians to ?vacate their homes and move northwards? within hours, stating that ?any vehicle traveling in this area after 10 a.m. and any person who chooses not to follow this warning is putting his and his family?s life at risk.?88
As documented below, the Israeli military did not follow its orders to evacuate with the creation of safe passage routes, and on a daily basis Israeli warplanes and helicopters struck civilians in cars who were trying to flee, many with white flags out the windows, a widely accepted sign of civilian status. In two cases in this report, Israeli munitions struck humanitarian convoys and ambulances as they traveled the roads. On some days, Israeli war planes hit dozens of civilian cars, showing a clear pattern of failing to distinguish between civilian and military objects.
As a result of the destruction of most main roads in the south, fleeing civilians had to wind their way through narrow secondary roads, facing the constant danger of aerial attack. Taxi fares skyrocketed, often to several hundred dollars per person, or $1,000 per vehicle. The roads became so treacherous that corpses were left in vehicles struck by the IDF, because recovery teams could not reach the site. An exhausted man from Aitaroun, on the Israeli border, recounted his treacherous journey to Human Rights Watch soon after his arrival in Beirut:
We had two vans for four families, eighteen people in all. The journey was very dangerous, with airplanes constantly in the sky. The main road is cut, so we had to go on little side roads or off the road. It took seven hours to Beirut. Just before we reached Tyre, the planes hit a car in front of us, it was still burning when we got there, a civilian car.
We saw a total of thirteen cars along the way that had been bombed, often with civilians in them who had died. We saw the dead women and children, and their clothes and mattresses in the car?.There were four cars with bodies still in them, the smell?you could smell them from kilometers away. We had to close the windows because of the smell.89
Manal Hassan Alawiye, a twenty-two-year-old woman from Aitaroun, recalled a similarly harrowing journey to Human Rights Watch:
Neighbors of mine left with a van and two cars, and I went with them. We first stopped at Bent Jbeil at the hospital because there was a plane in the air. When we started again, the plane came and hit the road in front and behind us, just ten meters away from us, with bombs. But we just kept driving. We were flying white flags. Along the way, we saw the dead still inside the cars. I remember well when we approached es-Soultaniye, there was a Mercedes 300 overturned with dead people inside, we wanted to stop but the driver said we would be hit. There were men, women and children, I remember seeing two dead children. Along the way, we met an old woman who was crying by the side of the road because no-one wanted to take her, so we took her with us. There was lots of destruction, all of the gas stations were bombed and we drove as fast as we could. It only got better when we crossed the Litani River.90
Israel at times gave assurances to officials at UNIFIL that civilian cars traveling north on the main roads would not be attacked.91 However, as documented in a number of examples below, Israel repeatedly attacked both individual vehicles and entire convoys of civilians who heeded the Israeli warnings to abandon their villages. The attacks on civilian vehicles were so fierce that, according to the Lebanese Red Cross, one ambulance driver witnessed three separate attacks while driving from Tebnine to Tyre with wounded civilans: first he witnessed the car in front of the ambulance get hit and fall into a ravine near Kafra; then a van got hit in Siddiquine, the blast of the explosion throwing the car into the air and hitting the ambulance on its side; and then a motorcycle got hit on the road near Hanaouay.92
Although Israeli officials are no doubt aware of the civilian casualties that their bombing of vehicles has caused, such attacks continued apace as this report went to print. At best, the continued attacks on fleeing civilians show reckless disregard by Israel for its obligation to distinguish between civilian and military objects, and a complete failure to take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths. At worst, Israel is deliberately targeting civilian vehicles as part of the price that must be paid to stop all traffic in parts of Lebanon. Either way, Israel is flagrantly violating its obligations under international humanitarian law, and its widespread attacks on civilian vehicles are war crimes.
Killing of Twenty-one Civilians Fleeing Marwahin, July 15
On July 15, an Israeli strike on a convoy of civilians fleeing from the Lebanese border village of Marwahin killed twenty-one people, including fourteen children. Many villagers fled after the IDF warned them to evacuate ahead of a threatened attack. In addition, a relative of one of the victims said, Hezbollah had stored weapons in the village, and the residents feared a retaliatory IDF attack.93 The villagers of Marwahin are Sunni and have long-standing tensions with the Shi?a Hezbollah organization.
A witness explained to Human Rights Watch that some of the villagers first sought refuge at a nearby UNIFIL position located 1.5 kilometers from the village, explaining that they had been ordered to evacuate by the IDF:
I was in phone contact with my relatives in the village. Around 8:30-9:00 a.m. on that day, my relatives called to say that the Israelis had warned they should evacuate in two hours. The Israelis had spoken on loudspeakers in Arabic from across the border, which is nearby. My relatives said they would go to the UNIFIL post beside the village. They went to the outpost and stayed there for two hours, but after two hours UNIFIL said they had orders not to let them in.94
UNIFIL contacted the IDF liaison officer and the Lebanese army, but was unable to confirm the evacuation order, so the peacekeepers told the villagers to return to the village.95
At 11 a.m., a group of villagers left Marwahin in a convoy of vehicles, on the single main road out of the village. On the way, between the villages of Chamaa and Biyada, two weapons believed to have been fired from Israeli helicopters struck a white pick-up and a passenger car in the convoy. A photographer for an international news agency arrived at the scene two hours after the attack. He told Human Rights Watch that he found a white pick-up truck and a passenger car completely destroyed, and counted sixteen bodies at the scene, including many children. He did not see any armed persons among the bodies.96 UNIFIL retrieved sixteen bodies from the scene, and stated that their medical teams came under fire during the rescue operation.97 A total of twenty-one people died during the attack, based on a list of names provided to Human Rights Watch by the relatives,98 and on the number of bodies ultimately received at the Tyre Government hospital.99
Those killed in the air strike were: Ali Abdullah, 60; Mohammed Abdullah, 15; Sabha Abdullah, in her eighties; Sana Abdullah, 35 (pregnant); Ali Kamel Abdullah, 14; Mohammed Kamel Abdullah, 13; Hussain Abdullah, 10-11; Hassan Abdullah, 9; Lama Abdullah, 1-2; Zahra Abdullah, 52; Hadi Abdullah, 6-7; Mirna Abdullah, 13; Maryam Abdullah, 29; Mohammed Ghannam, 35; Suha Abdullah, 30 (seven months pregnant); Qassim Ghannam, 17; Mustafa Ghannam, 15; Hussain Ghannam, 14; Zeinab Ghannam, 10; Fatima, 9; and Duha Ghannam, 7.
Killing of Two and Wounding of Four Fleeing Mansouri, July 23
The Srour family who resides in Germany was vacationing in the seaside village of Mansouri, 10 miles south of Tyre, having arrived two days before the fighting in Lebanon began.100 On July 23, the family attempted to travel in a three-car convoy to Tyre, waving white flags, to evacuate to Germany. At about 10:30 a.m., an Israeli weapon struck their vehicle about four kilometers south of Tyre, near the village of Maaliye. Darwish Mudaihli, the driver of the car, died instantly, as did his brother-in-law, Mohammed Srour. The car caught on fire with the bodies of Darwish Mudaihli and Mohammed Srour inside.
Mohammed Srour?s children, Ahmed, 15; Ali, 13; Mahmoud, 8; and eight-month-old Mariam were severely burned during the attack. There was no sign of Hezbollah military activity or weapons in the vicinity, relatives of the victims said, and no one in the family had connections to Hezbollah.
Wounding of Nine Civilians Fleeing Mansouri, July 23
Shortly after the attack on the Srour family, an Israeli Apache helicopter hit a second civilian convoy in the area. Zein Zabad, a forty-five-year-old fruit farmer, had also driven up from Mansouri, attempting to evacuate his wife and four children. On the way, the family picked up a man who had been wounded when an air strike hit his car in Qlaile, and two more wounded people in Maaliye (the same area as the Srour attack), who were hit by an air strike while riding a motorcycle. Ali Jafar, a twenty-one-year-old day laborer who was injured in that helicopter strike on his motorcycle, told Human Rights Watch:
When I was hit, there was nothing around, no resistance [Hezbollah]. I was driving in shorts with my bag over my back, looking like a civilian. ? I was driving the motorcycle and suddenly it just melted in my hands. There was a rocket from a helicopter. ?I stopped a Range Rover to take us away, he was from our village.101
A munition fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter struck Zein Zabad?s car just forty meters from the Najem Hospital, wounding all nine persons inside.102 The attack on the Zabad family took place within sight of the Najem hospital, and there is no evidence of Hezbollah military activity in the vicinity of the hospital at the time of the attack.
Killing of Three Civilians and Wounding of Fourteen Fleeing Kafra, July 23
Heavy Israeli bombardments in Kafra had trapped fifty members of the extended Shaita family in a single home since the beginning of the war. Running out of food, the family decided to leave the village after hearing the evacuation orders from the IDF. On July 21, the family contacted the Red Cross for assistance with evacuation, but the Red Cross was unable to reach the village. On July 22, thirty-two family members, including most of the children present in the house, packed into a jeep and two cars, leaving seventeen family members behind without transportation. The first convoy made it safely to Tyre.
On July 23, the remaining family members convinced a taxi driver to take them to Tyre in a van, paying $1,000 for the drive. The family waved a large white flag outside the van, and many of the family members were holding smaller white cloths, to indicate their civilian status.103
As the van left Kafra, it was hit by an Israeli strike. Musbah Shaita, a member of the family who was sitting next to the driver but survived, told Human Rights Watch: ?I heard a noise like a blown tire, and the van started swerving. I told the driver to slow down the car, and he said, ?we?ve been hit!' The van stopped, and the driver and I got out. As the driver was calling on me to help get the wounded out, a second missile hit the car.?104
Three persons died in the strike: Nazira Shaita, about 70; her son Mohammed Amin Shaita, 53; and the family?s Syrian janitor, Zakwan [family name unknown], in his mid-forties. Their bodies remained in the vehicle, because recovery teams could not reach the area for days after the incident. The fourteen other family members were wounded, many of them severely.
According to Musbhah Shaita, ?when we were hit, there was no one around?no resistance [Hezbollah], nothing. The only person we saw on the road before was a wounded driver by the side of the road, asking for help.?105
Killing of One Civilian Traveling to Buy Food, Supplies and Medication, July 24
In the morning of Monday, July 24, Hassan Ibrahim Al-Sayyid, a 26-year-old man from the village of Beit Leef, was killed when an Israeli airplane fired on him while he drove his motorcycle. Hassan?s sister told Human Rights Watch that Hassan had left his village to buy food, candles and medication from a neighboring village for his brother, who is receiving dialysis treatment. The weapon hit Hassan?s motorbike on the road between Kafra and Siddiquine. According to his sister, Hassan was not a member of Hezbollah, and was on his way to get supplies for his relatives. The corpse was transferred to Tyre?s public hospital.106
Wounding of Six Ambulance Drivers and Three Patients, July 23
On July 23, at 11:15 p.m., Israeli warplanes struck two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana. The ambulances, which had Red Cross flags illuminated by a spot light mounted on the ambulance, were transferring three wounded Lebanese civilians from one ambulance to the other when the planes struck. A weapon directly hit one ambulance, and a second attack struck the second ambulance a few minutes later. All six of the Red Cross workers were injured during the attack, and the three patients they were treating suffered additional injuries. One of the patients, a middle-aged man, lost his leg in the ambulance strike, while his elderly mother was partially paralyzed. The third patient, a young boy, received multiple shrapnel wounds to the head.107
Making medical or religious personnel, medical units or medical transports the object of attack is a war crime.108
Those Left Behind
While some villagers residing south of the Litani River have chosen to remain in their villages?because they provide essential civil services or for other reasons?others are unable to flee because they have family members who are elderly or infirm, because the family lacks the means to pay exorbitant taxi fares, or because it fears the above-described dangers of Israeli attacks on the roads. As a result, tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in their villages, most hiding in basements, mosques or makeshift shelters, with depleted supplies of food, water, medicine and basic supplies.
At the same time, Israeli air strikes have hit humanitarian aid vehicles trying to service southern villages in need. On July 18, the IDF hit a convoy of the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates, destroying a vehicle carrying medicines, vegetable oil, sugar and rice, and killing the driver. On July 23, another strike hit two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana. Due to the continuing air attacks on roads and vehicles, humanitarian agencies have had difficulty reaching the populations in need. At the time of writing, Israel has refused to guarantee secure safe passage for many humanitarian convoys south of Tyre, with limited exceptions.109
Unable to flee or access humanitarian relief, civilians remaining in the south have been cut off from food, medical care and other necessities. Humanitarian convoys are largely unable to reach wounded persons or evacuate civilians from areas of active conflict. As the ICRC said on July 28:
In the south of the country, and particularly the villages along the border with Israel, the effects of military operations are rapidly making life unbearably dangerous for the remaining civilians trapped by the fighting. In addition, resources and access to water and basic services are very limited. Medical evacuations and aid operations are fraught with difficulty and cannot meet the needs.110
Don't worry, there's obviously stuff on Hezbollah too:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/18/lebano13760.htm
Too much material to copy here, here's just some quotes:
Israel/Lebanon: End Indiscriminate Strikes on Civilians
Some Israeli Attacks Amount to War Crimes
On July 16, an Israeli aircraft fired on a civilian home in the village of Aitaroun, killing 11 members of the al-Akhrass family, among them seven Canadian-Lebanese dual nationals who were vacationing in the village when the war began. Human Rights Watch independently interviewed three villagers who vigorously denied that the family had any connection to Hezbollah. Among the victims were children aged one, three, five and seven.
(Beirut, August 3, 2006) ? Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.
Killing of Four Brazilian-Lebanese Civilians in Srifa, July 13
On two occasions, the IDF killed civilians in the village Srifa, located twenty-five kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border. The first attack on July 13 killed four Brazilian-Lebanese dual nationals. On July 19, another strike killed nineteen people (see below).
The first took place at about 4 a.m. on July 13, around the same time as other air strikes on the villages of Dweir and Baflay (see below). Fatima Musa, a Srifa resident, described the strike to Human Rights Watch:
First they hit a school building at night, from Wednesday to Thursday, starting at around 3:30 to 4 a.m. Then, they hit the house just behind us. We didn?t hear the airplanes, we just heard the rocket. We were sleeping and woke up when the house lit up from the explosions. My son was shivering with fear.13
The air strike hit a home in the Ain neighborhood of Srifa, demolishing the home and killing the family inside.
According to three witnesses, the four persons killed in the first strike on Srifa were all Brazilian-Lebanese dual nationals who had come to Srifa less than one month before to spend their summer vacation in the village.14 The witnesses identified the dead as Akil Merhi, 33; his wife, Ahlam Merhi, 25; their son, Abd?el Hadi Merhi, 8; and their daughter, Fatima Merhi, 4. Because the family was only vacationing in Lebanon and normally resided in Brazil, it is unlikely that their adult members were involved in Hezbollah activities. The witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch also denied there was a Hezbollah presence or fighting in the area at the time of the attack
There was no Hezbollah activity around the home when the second bomb struck, the villagers said.
Killing of Thirteen Civilians in Dweir, July 13
On Thursday, July 13, at about 4:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes struck the home of Shi?a cleric Sheikh `Adil Mohammed Akash, killing the cleric and eleven members of his family. Sheikh Akash was an Iranian-educated cleric and is believed to have been affiliated with Hezbollah, although there is no indication that he took part in hostilities or had a commanding role, either of which might have made him a legitimate military target.
The first missile demolished the two-story home in the village of Dweir, located halfway between Saida and Tyre, while a second missile fired minutes later failed to explode. The sheikh and his family had returned to the home just twenty minutes before the strike, an eyewitness who lived nearby told Human Rights Watch.17 The strike killed Sheikh `Adil Mohammed Akash; his wife, Rabab Yasin, 39; and ten of their children: Mohammed Baker Akash, 18; Mohammed Hassan Akash, 7; Fatima Akash, 17; `Ali Rida Akash, 12; Ghadir Akash, 10; Zeinab Akash, 13; Sara Akash, 5; Batul Akash, 4; Nour el-Huda Akash, 2; and Safa? Akash, 2 months. The family?s Sri Lankan maid, whose name is not known, also died.18
There was no evidence of Hezbollah military activity in or around the home, and the village of Dweir is too far from the Israeli border (about 40 kilometers) to serve as an effective launching site for Hezbollah rockets.
International law permits the targeting of military commanders in the course of armed conflict, provided that such attacks otherwise comply with the laws that protect civilians. Political leaders, however, are civilians; they are not legitimate military targets. The only exception to this rule is if they assume a military command or participate directly in military hostilities, which would then render them combatants.
Even if Israel believed Sheikh Akash was a legitimate military target because of his possible involvement in Hezbollah military activities (of which Human Rights Watch has no evidence), Israel should have taken into account the likely civilian casualties of attacking him in his home in determining whether the military gain of attacking him there outweighed the civilian harm. In this case, the death of at best one possible Hezbollah member cost the lives of twelve civilians, nine of them children.
Killing of Four Civilians, Including a U.S.-Lebanese National, in Bent Jbeil, July 15
At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 15, an Israeli airplane fired at a three-story civilian home in Bent Jbeil, a large town near Lebanon?s border with Israel. The strike collapsed the home, killing 80-year-old Haj Abu Naji Mrouj, and his 40-year-old daughter whose name is unknown to Human Rights Watch, and trapping their bodies under the rubble. Hashem Kazan, 16, who was wounded in the second strike while trying to recover the bodies (see below), told Human Rights Watch that Haj Abu Naji Mrouj had nothing to do with Hezbollah. ?Haj Abu Naji was not Hezbollah; he was an old man who didn?t work anymore,? he said. ?The Haj just lived in his house with his daughter.?23 The bodies of Haj Abu Naji and his daughter remain buried in the rubble of their demolished home. Another witness denied that there was any Hezbollah presence at or near the home at the time of the attack.24
While villagers were attempting to dig the bodies out of the rubble, an Israeli warplane fired a second missile at the rubble and the rescuers at around 1:15 p.m., killing two male civilians, including 30-year-old Bilal Hreish, a U.S.-Lebanese dual national. Hashem Kazan told Human Rights Watch how he was wounded during the second attack as he worked to recover the bodies:
There was no Hezbollah at the house when I went there, and there was no fighting taking place in the village?there was no one but civilians. The civil defense was there to help us [recover the bodies]. Originally, there were about fifty people at the rubble trying to help, but then we were only about ten. We were on the rooftop of the house when we were hit. I didn?t hear anything, I just heard the explosion.25
Hashem Kazan told Human Rights Watch that at least six were wounded in the second air strike, including two sons of Haj Abu Naji Mrouj.26
Killing of At Least 28 Civilians in Qana, July 30
Around 1 a.m. on July 30, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at the village of Qana. Among the homes struck was a three-story building in which sixty-three members of two extended families had sought shelter. The home collapsed and killed at least twenty-eight people. Sixteen children are among the dead.
Initial reports after the attack put the death toll at fifty-four, which was based on a register of sixty-three persons who had sought shelter in the building that was struck, and the rescue teams? ability to locate only nine survivors. Human Rights Watch learned after a visit to Qana that at least twenty-two people escaped the basement, and twenty-eight are confirmed dead. The fate of the remaining thirteen people who hid in the basement is unknown, and village representatives believe they remain buried in the debris.
The civilians from the two families had sought shelter in the house because it was one of the larger buildings in the area and had a reinforced basement, according to the deputy mayor of the town, Dr. Issam Matuni.80
According to Muhammed Mahmoud Shalhoub, a 61-year-old farmer who was in the basement during the attack, sixty-three members of the Shalhoub and Hashim families went to hide in three ground-floor rooms of the three-story building when the first missile landed in the village around 6 p.m. on July 29, he said. He explained how, around 1 a.m. on July 30, after heavy bombing in the village, an Israeli missile struck the ground floor of the home:
It felt like someone lifted the house. The ground floor of the house is 2.5 meters high. When the first strike hit, it hit below us and the whole house lifted, the rocket hit under the house. I was sitting by the door?it got very dusty and smoky ?and we were all in shock. I was not injured and found myself [thrown] outside. There was a lot of screaming inside. When I tried to go back in I couldn?t see because of the smoke. I started pushing people out, whomever I could find.
Five minutes later, another air strike came and hit the other side of the building, behind us. After the second strike, we could barely breathe and we couldn?t see anything. There were three rooms in the house where people were hiding [on the ground floor]. After the first strike, a lot of earth was pushed up into the rooms. We only managed to find some people in the first room.81
Shalhoub vigorously denied that any Hezbollah fighters were present in or around the home when the attack took place. All four roads to Qana village had been cut by Israeli bombs, he said, which would have made it difficult if not impossible for Hezbollah to move rocket launchers into the village.
?If they [the IDF] really saw the rocket launcher, where did it go?? Shalhoub said. ?We showed Israel our dead, why don?t the Israelis show us the rocket launchers??
Ghazi `Aydaji, another Qana villager, who rushed to the house when it was hit at 1 a.m., gave an account consistent with Shalhoub?s. He and others removed a number of people from the building after the first strike, he said, but they could remove no one else after the second strike hit five minutes later. ?If Hezbollah was firing near the house, would a family of over 50 people just sit there?? he said to Human Rights Watch.82
Human Rights Watch researchers visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, and did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. None of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers, and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home around the time that it was hit. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from in or near the building.
After the incident, Israeli government expressed regret over the civilian deaths and said it would conduct an investigation. Various officials said that Hezbollah fighters were to blame for firing rockets near the building, and the IDF had warned civilians to leave.83
An unnamed senior Israeli air force commander said the military hit the building with a precision-guided bomb because Hezbollah had fired rockets from the area. When asked how the military knew about the rockets but not the presence of civilians in the building, the commander said the IDF was ?capable of detecting missile launches because they are very dynamic,? while the civilians were not seen because they had been hiding in the building for some days.84 His opinion contradicts the testimony of Muhammed Mahmoud Shalhoub, above, who said the families went into the house when the aerial attack began around 6 p.m. on July 29.
On August 1, one of Israel?s top military correspondents, reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz that, while the Israeli Air Force investigation into the incident was ongoing, ?questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.? He elaborated that the IDF had changed its original story and that ?it now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.?85
As of August 2, the IDF had not publicized any conclusions from its internal military probe and Human Rights Watch continues to call for an international investigation into the incident.
According to lists from the Lebanese Red Cross and Tyre hospital, the confirmed dead as of August 1 are: Husna Hashem, 75; Mahdi Mahmud Hashem, 68; Ibrahim Hashem, 65; Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 55; `Afaf al-Zabad, 45; Nabila `Ali Amin Shalhoub, 40; Tayssir `Ali Shalhoub, 39; Khadije `Ali Yussef, 31; Maryam Hassan Mohsen, 30; Lina Muhammad Mahmud Shalhoub, 30; `Ola Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 25; `Ali Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 17; Hussein Ahmad Hashem, 12; Houra? Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 12; `Ali Muhammad Kassem Shalhoub, 10; Ja`far Mahmud Hashem, 10; Qassem Samih Shalhoub, 9; Yahya Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 9; Qassem Muhammad Shalhoub, 7; Raqiteh Mahmud Shalhoub, 7; Ibrahim Ahmad Hashem, 7; Yussef Ahmad Mahmud Shalhoub, 6; Zaynab Muhammad `Ali Amin Shalhoub, 6; Fatima Muhammad Hashem, 4; Ali Ahmad Hashem, 3; Zahra? Muhammad Qassem Shalhoub, 2; Abbas Ahmad Hashem, 9 months; Roukaya Mohammad Hashem, age unknown.
Attacks on Fleeing Civilians
Israel?s military operations between July 12 and July 27 trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians in southern Lebanese villages, including tens of thousands of dual nationals and foreigners who were vacationing in Lebanon at the time. The roads in many parts of southern Lebanon became too dangerous to travel, with daily strikes on civilian vehicles trying to flee.
Around July 15, the Israeli army began ordering villagers from the south to evacuate immediately, dropping leaflets, using speaker systems, making radio broadcasts, and even sending messages in Arabic on mobile phones. On the morning of July 15, for example, an Arabic speaker from the Israeli side of the border used a loudspeaker to tell the villagers of Marwahin to leave their homes within two hours (twenty-one of the villagers were killed that same day when an Israeli weapon struck their car, as discussed below).86 Over the following days, Israeli officials also called many village leaders on their mobile phones with a recorded message, ordering them to leave their villages immediately and to head north of the Litani River. The message warned them not to travel on motorcycles, vans, or trucks.87 On July 28, Israel again ordered civilians to ?vacate their homes and move northwards? within hours, stating that ?any vehicle traveling in this area after 10 a.m. and any person who chooses not to follow this warning is putting his and his family?s life at risk.?88
As documented below, the Israeli military did not follow its orders to evacuate with the creation of safe passage routes, and on a daily basis Israeli warplanes and helicopters struck civilians in cars who were trying to flee, many with white flags out the windows, a widely accepted sign of civilian status. In two cases in this report, Israeli munitions struck humanitarian convoys and ambulances as they traveled the roads. On some days, Israeli war planes hit dozens of civilian cars, showing a clear pattern of failing to distinguish between civilian and military objects.
As a result of the destruction of most main roads in the south, fleeing civilians had to wind their way through narrow secondary roads, facing the constant danger of aerial attack. Taxi fares skyrocketed, often to several hundred dollars per person, or $1,000 per vehicle. The roads became so treacherous that corpses were left in vehicles struck by the IDF, because recovery teams could not reach the site. An exhausted man from Aitaroun, on the Israeli border, recounted his treacherous journey to Human Rights Watch soon after his arrival in Beirut:
We had two vans for four families, eighteen people in all. The journey was very dangerous, with airplanes constantly in the sky. The main road is cut, so we had to go on little side roads or off the road. It took seven hours to Beirut. Just before we reached Tyre, the planes hit a car in front of us, it was still burning when we got there, a civilian car.
We saw a total of thirteen cars along the way that had been bombed, often with civilians in them who had died. We saw the dead women and children, and their clothes and mattresses in the car?.There were four cars with bodies still in them, the smell?you could smell them from kilometers away. We had to close the windows because of the smell.89
Manal Hassan Alawiye, a twenty-two-year-old woman from Aitaroun, recalled a similarly harrowing journey to Human Rights Watch:
Neighbors of mine left with a van and two cars, and I went with them. We first stopped at Bent Jbeil at the hospital because there was a plane in the air. When we started again, the plane came and hit the road in front and behind us, just ten meters away from us, with bombs. But we just kept driving. We were flying white flags. Along the way, we saw the dead still inside the cars. I remember well when we approached es-Soultaniye, there was a Mercedes 300 overturned with dead people inside, we wanted to stop but the driver said we would be hit. There were men, women and children, I remember seeing two dead children. Along the way, we met an old woman who was crying by the side of the road because no-one wanted to take her, so we took her with us. There was lots of destruction, all of the gas stations were bombed and we drove as fast as we could. It only got better when we crossed the Litani River.90
Israel at times gave assurances to officials at UNIFIL that civilian cars traveling north on the main roads would not be attacked.91 However, as documented in a number of examples below, Israel repeatedly attacked both individual vehicles and entire convoys of civilians who heeded the Israeli warnings to abandon their villages. The attacks on civilian vehicles were so fierce that, according to the Lebanese Red Cross, one ambulance driver witnessed three separate attacks while driving from Tebnine to Tyre with wounded civilans: first he witnessed the car in front of the ambulance get hit and fall into a ravine near Kafra; then a van got hit in Siddiquine, the blast of the explosion throwing the car into the air and hitting the ambulance on its side; and then a motorcycle got hit on the road near Hanaouay.92
Although Israeli officials are no doubt aware of the civilian casualties that their bombing of vehicles has caused, such attacks continued apace as this report went to print. At best, the continued attacks on fleeing civilians show reckless disregard by Israel for its obligation to distinguish between civilian and military objects, and a complete failure to take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths. At worst, Israel is deliberately targeting civilian vehicles as part of the price that must be paid to stop all traffic in parts of Lebanon. Either way, Israel is flagrantly violating its obligations under international humanitarian law, and its widespread attacks on civilian vehicles are war crimes.
Killing of Twenty-one Civilians Fleeing Marwahin, July 15
On July 15, an Israeli strike on a convoy of civilians fleeing from the Lebanese border village of Marwahin killed twenty-one people, including fourteen children. Many villagers fled after the IDF warned them to evacuate ahead of a threatened attack. In addition, a relative of one of the victims said, Hezbollah had stored weapons in the village, and the residents feared a retaliatory IDF attack.93 The villagers of Marwahin are Sunni and have long-standing tensions with the Shi?a Hezbollah organization.
A witness explained to Human Rights Watch that some of the villagers first sought refuge at a nearby UNIFIL position located 1.5 kilometers from the village, explaining that they had been ordered to evacuate by the IDF:
I was in phone contact with my relatives in the village. Around 8:30-9:00 a.m. on that day, my relatives called to say that the Israelis had warned they should evacuate in two hours. The Israelis had spoken on loudspeakers in Arabic from across the border, which is nearby. My relatives said they would go to the UNIFIL post beside the village. They went to the outpost and stayed there for two hours, but after two hours UNIFIL said they had orders not to let them in.94
UNIFIL contacted the IDF liaison officer and the Lebanese army, but was unable to confirm the evacuation order, so the peacekeepers told the villagers to return to the village.95
At 11 a.m., a group of villagers left Marwahin in a convoy of vehicles, on the single main road out of the village. On the way, between the villages of Chamaa and Biyada, two weapons believed to have been fired from Israeli helicopters struck a white pick-up and a passenger car in the convoy. A photographer for an international news agency arrived at the scene two hours after the attack. He told Human Rights Watch that he found a white pick-up truck and a passenger car completely destroyed, and counted sixteen bodies at the scene, including many children. He did not see any armed persons among the bodies.96 UNIFIL retrieved sixteen bodies from the scene, and stated that their medical teams came under fire during the rescue operation.97 A total of twenty-one people died during the attack, based on a list of names provided to Human Rights Watch by the relatives,98 and on the number of bodies ultimately received at the Tyre Government hospital.99
Those killed in the air strike were: Ali Abdullah, 60; Mohammed Abdullah, 15; Sabha Abdullah, in her eighties; Sana Abdullah, 35 (pregnant); Ali Kamel Abdullah, 14; Mohammed Kamel Abdullah, 13; Hussain Abdullah, 10-11; Hassan Abdullah, 9; Lama Abdullah, 1-2; Zahra Abdullah, 52; Hadi Abdullah, 6-7; Mirna Abdullah, 13; Maryam Abdullah, 29; Mohammed Ghannam, 35; Suha Abdullah, 30 (seven months pregnant); Qassim Ghannam, 17; Mustafa Ghannam, 15; Hussain Ghannam, 14; Zeinab Ghannam, 10; Fatima, 9; and Duha Ghannam, 7.
Killing of Two and Wounding of Four Fleeing Mansouri, July 23
The Srour family who resides in Germany was vacationing in the seaside village of Mansouri, 10 miles south of Tyre, having arrived two days before the fighting in Lebanon began.100 On July 23, the family attempted to travel in a three-car convoy to Tyre, waving white flags, to evacuate to Germany. At about 10:30 a.m., an Israeli weapon struck their vehicle about four kilometers south of Tyre, near the village of Maaliye. Darwish Mudaihli, the driver of the car, died instantly, as did his brother-in-law, Mohammed Srour. The car caught on fire with the bodies of Darwish Mudaihli and Mohammed Srour inside.
Mohammed Srour?s children, Ahmed, 15; Ali, 13; Mahmoud, 8; and eight-month-old Mariam were severely burned during the attack. There was no sign of Hezbollah military activity or weapons in the vicinity, relatives of the victims said, and no one in the family had connections to Hezbollah.
Wounding of Nine Civilians Fleeing Mansouri, July 23
Shortly after the attack on the Srour family, an Israeli Apache helicopter hit a second civilian convoy in the area. Zein Zabad, a forty-five-year-old fruit farmer, had also driven up from Mansouri, attempting to evacuate his wife and four children. On the way, the family picked up a man who had been wounded when an air strike hit his car in Qlaile, and two more wounded people in Maaliye (the same area as the Srour attack), who were hit by an air strike while riding a motorcycle. Ali Jafar, a twenty-one-year-old day laborer who was injured in that helicopter strike on his motorcycle, told Human Rights Watch:
When I was hit, there was nothing around, no resistance [Hezbollah]. I was driving in shorts with my bag over my back, looking like a civilian. ? I was driving the motorcycle and suddenly it just melted in my hands. There was a rocket from a helicopter. ?I stopped a Range Rover to take us away, he was from our village.101
A munition fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter struck Zein Zabad?s car just forty meters from the Najem Hospital, wounding all nine persons inside.102 The attack on the Zabad family took place within sight of the Najem hospital, and there is no evidence of Hezbollah military activity in the vicinity of the hospital at the time of the attack.
Killing of Three Civilians and Wounding of Fourteen Fleeing Kafra, July 23
Heavy Israeli bombardments in Kafra had trapped fifty members of the extended Shaita family in a single home since the beginning of the war. Running out of food, the family decided to leave the village after hearing the evacuation orders from the IDF. On July 21, the family contacted the Red Cross for assistance with evacuation, but the Red Cross was unable to reach the village. On July 22, thirty-two family members, including most of the children present in the house, packed into a jeep and two cars, leaving seventeen family members behind without transportation. The first convoy made it safely to Tyre.
On July 23, the remaining family members convinced a taxi driver to take them to Tyre in a van, paying $1,000 for the drive. The family waved a large white flag outside the van, and many of the family members were holding smaller white cloths, to indicate their civilian status.103
As the van left Kafra, it was hit by an Israeli strike. Musbah Shaita, a member of the family who was sitting next to the driver but survived, told Human Rights Watch: ?I heard a noise like a blown tire, and the van started swerving. I told the driver to slow down the car, and he said, ?we?ve been hit!' The van stopped, and the driver and I got out. As the driver was calling on me to help get the wounded out, a second missile hit the car.?104
Three persons died in the strike: Nazira Shaita, about 70; her son Mohammed Amin Shaita, 53; and the family?s Syrian janitor, Zakwan [family name unknown], in his mid-forties. Their bodies remained in the vehicle, because recovery teams could not reach the area for days after the incident. The fourteen other family members were wounded, many of them severely.
According to Musbhah Shaita, ?when we were hit, there was no one around?no resistance [Hezbollah], nothing. The only person we saw on the road before was a wounded driver by the side of the road, asking for help.?105
Killing of One Civilian Traveling to Buy Food, Supplies and Medication, July 24
In the morning of Monday, July 24, Hassan Ibrahim Al-Sayyid, a 26-year-old man from the village of Beit Leef, was killed when an Israeli airplane fired on him while he drove his motorcycle. Hassan?s sister told Human Rights Watch that Hassan had left his village to buy food, candles and medication from a neighboring village for his brother, who is receiving dialysis treatment. The weapon hit Hassan?s motorbike on the road between Kafra and Siddiquine. According to his sister, Hassan was not a member of Hezbollah, and was on his way to get supplies for his relatives. The corpse was transferred to Tyre?s public hospital.106
Wounding of Six Ambulance Drivers and Three Patients, July 23
On July 23, at 11:15 p.m., Israeli warplanes struck two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana. The ambulances, which had Red Cross flags illuminated by a spot light mounted on the ambulance, were transferring three wounded Lebanese civilians from one ambulance to the other when the planes struck. A weapon directly hit one ambulance, and a second attack struck the second ambulance a few minutes later. All six of the Red Cross workers were injured during the attack, and the three patients they were treating suffered additional injuries. One of the patients, a middle-aged man, lost his leg in the ambulance strike, while his elderly mother was partially paralyzed. The third patient, a young boy, received multiple shrapnel wounds to the head.107
Making medical or religious personnel, medical units or medical transports the object of attack is a war crime.108
Those Left Behind
While some villagers residing south of the Litani River have chosen to remain in their villages?because they provide essential civil services or for other reasons?others are unable to flee because they have family members who are elderly or infirm, because the family lacks the means to pay exorbitant taxi fares, or because it fears the above-described dangers of Israeli attacks on the roads. As a result, tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in their villages, most hiding in basements, mosques or makeshift shelters, with depleted supplies of food, water, medicine and basic supplies.
At the same time, Israeli air strikes have hit humanitarian aid vehicles trying to service southern villages in need. On July 18, the IDF hit a convoy of the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates, destroying a vehicle carrying medicines, vegetable oil, sugar and rice, and killing the driver. On July 23, another strike hit two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana. Due to the continuing air attacks on roads and vehicles, humanitarian agencies have had difficulty reaching the populations in need. At the time of writing, Israel has refused to guarantee secure safe passage for many humanitarian convoys south of Tyre, with limited exceptions.109
Unable to flee or access humanitarian relief, civilians remaining in the south have been cut off from food, medical care and other necessities. Humanitarian convoys are largely unable to reach wounded persons or evacuate civilians from areas of active conflict. As the ICRC said on July 28:
In the south of the country, and particularly the villages along the border with Israel, the effects of military operations are rapidly making life unbearably dangerous for the remaining civilians trapped by the fighting. In addition, resources and access to water and basic services are very limited. Medical evacuations and aid operations are fraught with difficulty and cannot meet the needs.110
Don't worry, there's obviously stuff on Hezbollah too:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/18/lebano13760.htm
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