BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Tuesday said an Israeli strike in Lebanon that killed seven first responders was “an unlawful attack on civilians,” and urged Washington to suspend the sale of weapons to Israel.
“An Israeli strike on an emergency and relief center” in the southern village of Habbariyeh on March 27 “killed seven emergency and relief volunteers,” constituting an “unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions,” HRW said in a statement.
It said the massacre was committed against “a civil society association that provides emergency services, ambulances, first-aid training, and primary care and relief services in Lebanon.”
Furthermore, HRW said it “did not find any evidence of the presence of military targets at the site that was targeted with the acknowledgment of the Israeli army, which did not take possible precautions to ensure that the target was military … which makes the raid illegal.”
Ramzi Kaiss, HRW’s Lebanon researcher, said: “Israeli forces used a US weapon to conduct a strike that killed seven civilian relief workers in Lebanon who were merely doing their jobs.”
He said the Israeli army used US-made ammunition to carry out the raid.
HRW said it “sent a letter containing the results of reviewing the photos and videos of the site before and after the raid, including a video of the remnants of the ammunition found at the site, and questions to the Israeli army and the US State Department on April 19, but did not receive any response.”
The rights group said it found a metal fragment at the site of the bombing with “MPR 500” written on it, confirming that it is from a 500-pound general-purpose bomb made by Israeli company Elbit Systems, and the fragments and fins are part of a joint direct attack munition set manufactured by American company Boeing.
HRW urged the US to “immediately suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel given evidence that the Israeli military is using US weapons unlawfully.”
The organization asked Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry to “take immediate action by submitting a declaration to the International Criminal Court, allowing it to investigate crimes falling within its jurisdiction committed on Lebanese territory since October 2023, and prosecute the perpetrators.”
A group of activists from the Gathering of Free University Students organized a demonstration in front of the American University of Beirut campus in support of Palestine and the people of Gaza.
The participants raised a large banner supporting “resistance and boycott until the disintegration of the Israeli entity and the establishment of one Palestine.”
