By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA, March 17 (Reuters) – Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings, displaced people and healthcare workers in Lebanon raise concerns under international law and may amount to war crimes, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday.
The Israeli military has been carrying out airstrikes in Lebanon since the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel from Lebanon early in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Israel’s strikes have killed at least 886 people in Lebanon and forced more than 1 million from their homes, according to Lebanese authorities.
“Israeli airstrikes have destroyed entire residential buildings in dense urban environments with multiple members of the same family, including women and children, often killed together,” U.N. human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.
The Israeli military was not immediately available for comment on his remarks.
The U.N. human rights office called for an investigation into deadly strikes on displaced people sheltering in tents along Beirut’s seafront and on a healthcare centre in the town of Bint Jbeil.
“International law is very clear that deliberately attacking civilians or civilian object amounts to war crime.”
Israel’s military has said it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, and frames a ground operation it has launched in Lebanon as a defensive effort to protect northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks. Hezbollah says its attacks are intended to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader during the war.
DISPLACEMENT INCREASING RAPIDLY
About one fifth of people in Lebanon have been registered as displaced following large-scale Israeli-issued evacuation orders across southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Israel’s extension of the orders to include the region between the Litani and Zaharani rivers may amount to forced displacement, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law, Al-Kheetan said.
The U.N.’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, said civilians were paying a heavy price.
“Displacement is increasing incredibly quickly. Right now, hundreds of thousands of people left their homes, many leaving with very little, just the clothes they were wearing,” he said.
Aid deliveries have been constrained by global donor cuts to funding and supply chain disruption, he said.
An air bridge used by Gulf countries to send in humanitarian aid during a 2023-2024 war is not operating because of airspace restrictions during the current wider conflict. There have been only three aid flights to Lebanon in the past week, Riza said.
(Editing by Madeline Chambers and Timothy Heritage)
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