BEIRUT: Amnesty International accused Israel on Thursday of “misleading” and sometimes inadequate calls for residents to evacuate parts of the country, expressing concern the warnings intend to massively uproot southerners.
Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.
“Warnings issued by the Israeli military to residents of Dahiyeh, the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut, were inadequate,” Amnesty chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
The group said it analyzed more than a dozen evacuation warnings and maps and conducted interviews with residents of south Beirut and south Lebanon.
Callamard said the warning included “misleading maps” and were issued “at short notice — in one instance less than 30 minutes before strikes began — in the middle of the night, via social media” when many are asleep, she added.
The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson has been routinely issuing evacuation orders online ahead of expected strikes mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.
“Israel’s warnings in southern Lebanon covered large geographical areas, raising concerns as to whether they were designed instead to trigger mass relocation,” Amnesty said.
“The conditions being created by Israel’s actions in south Lebanon risk forcibly displacing the majority of the civilian population there,” it added.
Last week, Israel also announced it was conducting “targeted” ground incursions in Lebanon’s south.
Analysts had previously told AFP Israel’s aim in expanding its activity at the border could be to create a buffer zone in Lebanon’s south, where Hezbollah holds sway.
Israel has issued calls to evacuate 118 south Lebanon towns and villages in the first week of October, Amnesty said.
The group warned that evacuation calls “do not make south Lebanon a free-fire zone” where remaining civilians as seen as targets and urged Israel to abide by international law to minimize harm to civilians.
One quarter of Lebanese territory is under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
On September 27, an Israeli air strike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who had led the group for 32 years, in the group’s south Beirut stronghold.
The latest escalation followed a year of near-daily fire between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel, which the group launched in support of ally Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.
Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘misleading’ Lebanon evacuation orders
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Amnesty accuses Israel of ‘misleading’ Lebanon evacuation orders
- Callamard said the warning included “misleading maps” and were issued “at short notice — in one instance less than 30 minutes before strikes began”
- “The conditions being created by Israel’s actions in south Lebanon risk forcibly displacing the majority of the civilian population there,” Amnesty said
Turkiye holds military funeral for Libyan officers killed in plane crash
- Libyan officials said the cause of the crash was a technical malfunction on the plane
ANKARA: Turkiye held a military funeral ceremony Sunday morning for five Libyan officers, including western Libya’s military chief, who died in a plane crash earlier this week.
The private jet with Gen. Muhammad Ali Ahmad Al-Haddad, four other military officers and three crew members crashed on Tuesday after taking off from Ankara, Turkiye’s capital, killing everyone on board. Libyan officials said the cause of the crash was a technical malfunction on the plane.
Al-Hadad was the top military commander in western Libya and played a crucial role in the ongoing, UN-brokered efforts to unify Libya’s military.
The high-level Libyan delegation was on its way back to Tripoli, Libya’s capital, after holding defense talks in Ankara aimed at boosting military cooperation between the two countries.
Sunday’s ceremony was held at 8:00 a.m. local time at the Murted Airfield base, near Ankara, and attended by the Turkish military chief and the defense minister. The five caskets wrapped in their national flag were then loaded onto a plane to be returned to Libya.
The bodies recovered from the crash site were kept at the Ankara Forensic Medicine Institute for identification. Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters their DNA was compared to family members who joined a 22-person delegation that arrived from Libya after the crash.
Tunc also said Germany was asked to help examine the jet’s black boxes as an impartial third party
Libya plunged into chaos after the country’s 2011 uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi. The country split, with rival administrations in the east and west, backed by an array of rogue militias and different foreign governments.
Turkiye has been the main backer of Libya’s government in the west, but has recently taken steps to improve ties with the eastern-based government as well.
