Lebanon files complaint with UNSC over Israeli strikes
Lebanon’s permanent mission to the UN has filed a formal complaint before the UN Security Council following the death of at least 10 civilians in two Israeli airstrikes in the south of the country.
Addressing the rotating President of the Security Council Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, the mission noted that the strikes against civilians amount to “war crime”.
“While international humanitarian law guarantees protection of civilians and civilian facilities, Israel’s deliberate and direct bombing of civilians in their homes is considered a violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime,” reads the complaint.
An Israeli strike knocked down part of a building in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh on Wednesday, killing seven members of the same family, including a child, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said. A boy initially reported missing was found alive under the rubble.
In a separate Israeli attack, a woman and her two children were killed in the village of as-Sawana in southern Lebanon.
The complaint added that the airstrikes are “considered a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, as well as safety of its lands and citizens.”
The attacks “breach upon all United Nations resolutions that require Israel to stop its violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and end its occupation of Lebanese lands, including Resolution 1701 (2006),” the mission added.
Meanwhile, a UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said Thursday that escalating hostilities in southern Lebanon have displaced more than 88,000
residents.
He added that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 60,000 people remain in border villages highly affected by exchanges of fire.
Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, said Thursday that a recent surge in hostilities in the south is “extremely concerning.”
“The loss of innocent life is lamentable. The rules of war are clear: Parties must protect civilians and these rules must be upheld. They are not a target,” Riza said in a statement. At least 39 civilians have reportedly been killed in southern Lebanon in the last four months, according to the UN Human Rights Office. The Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah has promised to retaliate for Wednesday’s strikes, stating that Israel would pay “the price” for killing 10 people, including five children in southern Lebanon.
“The enemy will pay the price for these crimes,” Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters.
“The resistance will continue to practice its legitimate right to defend its people,” he pointed out.
The border tension comes amid an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 28,775 people following an attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday the toll includes 112 fatalities over the past 24 hours, while 68,552 people have been wounded in Gaza.
It said five patients died Friday due to lack of oxygen at one of the war-torn Palestinian territory’s few operating hospitals that had been raided by Israeli forces.
“A fifth patient at Nasser hospital was martyred as a result of the stopping of generators that caused a cut in oxygen supply,” the ministry said in a statement, raising fears for four other patients admitted at the hospital’s intensive care unit and three children in a nursery.
Israel faced renewed calls from key ally the US on Friday against launching a large-scale attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted he would push ahead with a “powerful” operation in the overcrowded city to achieve “complete victory” over Hamas.
Fresh calls against
Rafah attack
The White House said that President Joe Biden had spoken by phone with Netanyahu late Thursday, urging him not to carry out an attack on Rafah without a plan to keep civilians
safe.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven into Rafah, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near the Egyptian border.
The city now hosts more than half of Gaza’s population, with displaced people “crammed” into less than 20 percent of the territory, according to OCHA.
AFP, REUTERS, Anadolu Agency, and Press TV contributed to this report.