JERUSALEM: Hamas led other Palestinian armed groups in committing hundreds of war crimes in the surprise October 7 attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.
One of the most in-depth international studies on the unprecedented incursion into southern Israel outlined a host of potential war crimes cases.
“It’s impossible for us to put a number on the specific instances,” HRW associate director Belkis Wille told a news conference, adding that “there were obviously hundreds on that day.”
The crimes include “deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects; willful killing of persons in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; sexual and gender-based violence; hostage taking; mutilation and despoiling (robbing) of bodies; use of human shields; and pillage and looting,” said the report.
The report focuses on violations of international humanitarian law, rules mostly rooted in the Geneva Conventions for conduct in war.
Although Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is recognized as the orchestrator of the attack, the report lists other armed groups that committed war crimes on October 7, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“The reality is that it really wasn’t civilians from Gaza who perpetrated the worst abuses,” said Wille.
“That was a claim made very early on by Hamas to distance itself from the events, and by Israel to justify its retaliation operation.”
Wille pointed to the “incredibly organized and coordinated nature” of the assault on cities, kibbutz communities, and military bases around Gaza.
“Across many attack sites, fighters fired directly at civilians, often at close range, as they tried to flee, and at people who happened to be driving vehicles in the area,” said the report.
“They hurled grenades and shot into safe rooms and other shelters and fired rocket-propelled grenades at homes.
“They set some houses on fire, burning and suffocating people to death, and forcing out others who they then captured or killed.”
HRW said it “found evidence of acts of sexual and gender-based violence by fighters including forced nudity, and the posting without consent of sexualized images on social media.”
The report quoted a team of the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict who said they interviewed people “who reported witnessing rape and other sexual violence” including “rape and gang rape, in at least three locations.”
But it said the full extent of sexual and gender-based violence “will likely never be fully known” as victims had died, or stigma would stop them talking out, or Israeli first responders “largely” did not collect relevant evidence.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,664 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring back all hostages.
The report only covered the events of October 7, not the subsequent war.
The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor has asked court judges to issue arrest warrants against Hamas leaders including its political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The prosecutor has also sought warrants against Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges ranging from “starvation of civilians” to “extermination and/or murder” as crimes against humanity.
Hundreds of war crimes committed in October 7 attack: HRW
https://arab.news/p26sk
Hundreds of war crimes committed in October 7 attack: HRW
- HRW report: ‘It is impossible for us to put a number on the specific instances’
- The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians
Qatar launches ‘air bridge’ for aid to war-struck Lebanon
- Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said the Qatari aid “will help cover shortages of medical, relief and support supplies” and will be “a vital push” for the hundreds of thousands of displaced and injured people
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Doha launched an “air bridge” to transport medical supplies and food aid to Lebanon, a Qatari minister said in Beirut on Tuesday, more than two weeks into intense Israeli strikes on the country.
“Today we launched the air bridge with consecutive planes carrying food, shelter materials and medical supplies,” said Qatar’s Minister of State for International Cooperation Lolwah Al-Khater from a public hospital in Beirut.
She said Doha was working “on medium and long-term plans to contain this humanitarian crisis.”
Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, killing more than 1,150 people and displacing upwards of a million people.
Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said the Qatari aid “will help cover shortages of medical, relief and support supplies” and will be “a vital push” for the hundreds of thousands of displaced and injured people.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati also met the Qatari minister.
A French plane carrying medical aid also landed in Beirut Tuesday, one of several planeloads of aid that arrived at Lebanon’s only international airport since the escalation began.
The United Arab Emirates, Turkiye, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Romania are also among the countries that have sent aid to Lebanon.
Egypt, Jordan voice support for Lebanon in face of Israeli ‘aggression’
- Both Amman and Cairo have repeatedly warned that the region is on the brink of all-out war and have accused Israel of being given impunity by its Western allies to systematically violate international law
CAIRO: The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to have made peace with Israel, expressed solidarity with Lebanon Tuesday in the face of Israel’s widening offensive.
Addressing a joint news conference in Cairo with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi called for an end to “Israeli aggression on three fronts” — in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank and now in Lebanon.
“We condemn the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, we condemn Israel’s shelling of the Lebanese capital, we condemn Israel’s killing of Lebanese citizens,” Safadi said.
Both Amman and Cairo have repeatedly warned that the region is on the brink of all-out war and have accused Israel of being given impunity by its Western allies to systematically violate international law.
“You have a country that finds itself above the law and unaccountable,” Abdelatty said.
Israel launched a wave of strikes against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on September 23, leaving at least 1,150 people dead since then and forcing more than a million people to flee.
While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has vowed to secure its northern border with Lebanon to allow the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s cross-border fire in support of its Palestinian ally.
Morocco says ‘ready’ to repatriate irregular migrants in Europe
- Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Tuesday said the kingdom was “ready to repatriate any irregular migrant who is certified to be Moroccan and who left from Moroccan territory”
RABAT, Morocco: Morocco on Tuesday said it was ready to take back its nationals who migrated irregularly to Europe, blaming host countries for repatriation delays.
It comes as French lawmakers have called for stricter migration policy after a Moroccan irregular migrant was arrested on suspicion of killing a 19-year-old French student last month.
French authorities had previously ordered his deportation in relation to a previous rape conviction, but Rabat has been blamed for not issuing a laissez-passer document allowing for his repatriation.
Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on Tuesday said the kingdom was “ready to repatriate any irregular migrant who is certified to be Moroccan and who left from Moroccan territory.”
“Morocco is ready, but is the other party ready?” he said during a press conference, adding that Rabat did not “need to receive lessons” on the fight against irregular migration.
The murder suspect was arrested in Switzerland on September 25, four days after the body of a 19-year-old female student was found in the woods in western Paris.
He had already been convicted of a rape he committed in 2019 and was ordered to leave the country.
After his arrest, French authorities said Morocco did not respond to their request to issue a laissez-passer for his immediate repatriation.
Rabat later said the request had not been correctly issued.
France’s new right-wing government has pledged to clamp down on migration.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has recently vowed to introduce new migration regulations to “protect the French.”
How Israel’s war on Hezbollah is pushing Lebanon’s health system to the brink of collapse
- Hospitals already crippled by grinding economic crisis are now overwhelmed by wounded people
- Israeli airstrikes on Syrian border and close to Beirut’s international airport have further disrupted aid deliveries
LONDON: Lebanon’s healthcare system, already crippled by years of economic crisis, has been brought to the brink of collapse since Israel’s unprecedented attack on Hezbollah’s communications network in mid-September and the wave of airstrikes targeting its leaders and weapons caches.
According to some reports, several health facilities have been damaged by Israeli airstrikes. Last month, the World Health Organization said the “escalation of violence” since Sept. 23 had forced at least 37 health centers to close their doors.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry also said dozens of medical workers have been killed, with the WHO reporting 28 deaths in a single 24-hour period last week.
Lebanon was rocked last month by two attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network, which saw pagers and walkie-talkies carried by militia members explode simultaneously.
The devices, reportedly booby-trapped by Israel, exploded in public areas, killing 20 people, including children, and injuring 450 others, according to the Health Ministry, overwhelming hospitals across Lebanon.
Soon afterward, Israel began pounding Lebanon in its pursuit of Hezbollah, its leadership, and its weapons. The relentless airstrikes have killed at least 1,250 people and injured more than 5,000, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Israel and Hezbollah began trading fire along the Lebanese border on Oct. 8, a day after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 and saw 250 taken hostage, prompting Israel’s retaliatory operation in Gaza.
Hezbollah rocket fire has displaced nearly 60,000 people from Israel’s north. The Israeli government says its stated aim is to push Hezbollah back to the Litani River, about 18 km from the Israeli border, which would allow displaced Israeli civilians to return to their homes.
Over the past two weeks, there have been reports of damage to healthcare facilities in Lebanon. In one such incident earlier this month, an airstrike on Marjayoun Hospital in the south knocked the facility out of service and killed dozens of staff.
Mounes Kalakesh, Marjayoun’s director, told AP news agency that the Israeli military did not warn the government hospital before the strike. Emergency Director Shoshana Mazraani described the facility’s ensuing closure as a “tragedy for the region.”
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman, Avichay Adraee, accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport weapons and fighters, but he did not provide evidence to support the claim.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Oct. 3 that 40 paramedics, firefighters and health workers had been killed in Israeli attacks over a period of three days.
Last week, the International Lebanese Medical Association appealed to the WHO to pressure Israel to halt what it called a “massacre” of Lebanon’s health workers.
IN NUMBERS
- 37 Lebanese health facilities forced to close owing to Israeli strikes, according to WHO.
- 97 Rescue workers killed since last October, according to Lebanon’s health minister.
Tania Baban, the Lebanon country director of the US-based charity MedGlobal, said the healthcare situation in Lebanon today is almost indescribable.
“The healthcare system is in a very difficult situation,” she told Arab News, stressing that if further hospitals are knocked out of action, the sector may not be able to respond to the mounting number of wounded.
“Even if they don’t get targeted, if there are still going to be attacks that are this intense on the south and in Dahieh (Beirut’s southern suburbs), that’s going to create a strain.”
Lebanon has suffered successive blows since the 2019 financial crisis, which severely impacted the provision of essential public services.
“The economic crisis caused the devaluation of the local currency and inflation, which caused some serious problems in the procurement of medical equipment and supplies as well as medications,” said Baban.
“When the government announced bankruptcy, it wasn’t able to purchase supplies for the hospitals, so the hospitals were not able to cater for the patients,” she added.
The economic situation also impacted livelihoods, leaving many people in Lebanon unable to afford private medical care.
Lebanon has been in the grips of a financial crisis since late 2019, brought on in part by the mountain of debt the government had built up since the end of the civil war in 1990. In April 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Saade Chami declared the state and its central bank bankrupt.
The World Bank reclassified Lebanon as a lower-middle-income country, down from upper-middle-income status in July 2022, after the country’s gross domestic product per capita dropped by 36.5 percent between 2019 and 2021.
Aid agencies in Lebanon are also concerned about the welfare of the approximately 1.2 million people who have been displaced by Israeli strikes and incursions in the south, the Bekaa Valley, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and Baalbek.
MedGlobal’s Baban says the scale of displacement in Lebanon has further strained medical services. Inadequate shelter, overcrowding, and the onset of winter heighten the risk of disease outbreaks.
“We’re worried about infectious diseases,” she said. “Flu season is on the way, COVID, the possibility of hepatitis A if they don’t have access to clean drinking water, and the possibility of, God forbid, cholera.”
Giacomo Baldini, the Lebanon country director of the non-profit Relief International, said that while his team is providing hygiene kits and medical outreach in Beirut, Tripoli, and the Bekaa Valley, “the need for clean water, hot food, and medical supplies is huge, and will only increase.”
He wrote in a first-hand account from Beirut shared with Arab News: “We are hoping to provide mental health support as soon as possible. There are simply not enough skilled professionals in Lebanon to provide the amount of support needed.”
Baban said: “The Ministry of Health is doing its best to reach out to stakeholders, including international NGOs such as MedGlobal, to bring in supplies from abroad.”
The ministry’s plan is to bring in additional resources while this is still possible, she said. “He (the health minister) doesn’t want people to procure and purchase supplies locally so as not to deplete the supplies we already have in the country.”
However, the intensifying Israeli strikes on southern Beirut, where part of the Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport is situated, pose a significant risk to the delivery of supplies.
“The health system’s capacity in Lebanon is deteriorating,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X on Oct. 3. “Medical supplies cannot be delivered due to the almost complete closure of Beirut’s airport.”
He called for the “urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon” as “lives depend on it.”
Baban of MedGlobal said NGOs are struggling to raise sufficient funds to alleviate the pressure on Lebanon’s health system amid the escalating hostilities and worsening humanitarian crisis.
And while there are donors providing “shipments of medical supplies that can be shipped into the country,” the suspension of flights by many carriers has hindered the process.
Israeli airstrikes on the main border crossing between Syria and Lebanon have also obstructed the movement of supplies and medicines into Lebanon.
On Oct. 4, Israeli airstrikes targeted the Masnaa border crossing, impeding civilians trying to flee and disrupting humanitarian operations, the international monitor Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
One of the biggest challenges Lebanon’s hospitals could soon face is maintaining a consistent power supply. Most still have access to fuel for generators and many have installed solar panels. However, as the colder months approach, they may have more challenges.
“So far, we’re okay with fuel, but if that changes or the prices go up, then it might create a problem because in winter, you can’t depend on solar panels,” said Baban. “If fuel prices go up, it will be expensive to purchase fuel to keep hospitals running.”
The people working tirelessly to keep hospitals operational are also at risk of exhaustion.
Baban warned that while many doctors remain in the country, “they’re obviously already on the brink of being overworked after these sharp and rapid escalations.”
WHO warns of possible Lebanon disease outbreaks
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official warned on Tuesday of disease outbreaks in Lebanon due to crowded conditions in displacement shelters and hospital closures as medics have fled Israel’s assault.
Israeli forces have begun ground operations in the southwest of Lebanon, escalating a year-long conflict with Iran-backed group Hezbollah that has killed over 1,000 people in the past two weeks and triggered a mass flight.
“We are facing a situation where there is a much higher risk of disease outbreaks, such as acute watery diarrhea, hepatitis A, and a number of vaccine-preventable diseases,” the WHO’s Ian Clarke, deputy incident manager for Lebanon, told a Geneva press briefing by video link from Beirut.
The UN health agency has already warned that the system is overstretched and so far five hospitals in the country have closed and four are only partly functional, Clarke said. He added that hospitals had been shut because medics had either fled the fighting or been asked to evacuate by Lebanese authorities.
