The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch harshly condemned Israel for "indiscriminate attacks" that killed most of the Lebanese civilians during the 2006 Summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report released Thursday.
Most of the civilian deaths in Lebanon caused by Israeli air strikes were not as the Israelis claimed that Hezbollah guerrillas used civilians as shields, Human Rights Watch said.
More than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the 34-day conflict last summer, which began after Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. They are still being held.
Human Rights Watch said it investigated 94 cases of air, artillery and ground attacks by the Israeli forces to discern the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 510 civilians and 51 combatants.
Of the approximately 510 Lebanese civilian deaths investigated by Human Rights Watch, at least 300 were women or children.
Human Rights Watch it visited more than 50 Lebanese villages and interviewed 316 victims and eyewitnesses, as well as 39 military experts, journalists and Israeli, Lebanese government and Hezbollah officials.
"Israel wrongfully acted as if all civilians had heeded its warnings to evacuate southern Lebanon when it knew they had not, disregarding its continuing legal duty to distinguish between military targets and civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev rejected the report's findings.
"Hezbollah adopted a deliberate strategy of shielding itself behind the civilian population and turning the civilians in Lebanon into a human shield," Regev was quoted by local media as saying.
Instead, he charged that Hezbollah "broke the first fundamental rule of war in that they deliberately exploited the civilian population of Lebanon as a human shield."
Human Rights Watch said that simple movement of vehicles or people, such as attempting to buy bread or moving around private homes, could trigger a deadly Israeli attack. The group charged that Israeli aircraft targeted vehicles carrying fleeing civilians.
Roth said that Hezbollah guerrillas did not wear uniforms, making it hard to pick them out from civilians, but that did not justify the Israeli military's failure to distinguish between them. He said the laws of war dictate if in doubt to treat the person as a civilian.
The report also found that Hezbollah used hilltop UN positions for shelling Israel, which it said might be shielding, but said that required further investigation.
Source: Xinhua
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