By IRNA
New York : Human Rights Watch said Sunday that Israel breached international law when it bombed southern Lebanon with cluster weapons in 2006.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch demanded an independent inquiry to determine whether individual Israeli commanders “bear responsibility for war crimes.”
A 131-page report ‘Flooding South Lebanon: Israeli Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006’, made available to reporters at the United Nations Headquarters, said that Israel violated international humanitarian law with hundreds of “indiscriminate and disproportionate cluster munitions attacks on Lebanon.”
Human Rights Watch said Israel had rained as many as 4.6 million submunitions, or cluster bomblets, across southern Lebanon – mostly in the final days of the war.
The report’s lead author, Bonnie Docherty, said the United Nations must investigate whether Israel deliberately targeted civilians with the munitions.
“Ninety percent of the (bombing) strikes occurred in the last three days of the war when Israel knew a cease-fire was imminent,” she said.
“Many, many of those strikes occurred on towns and villages across South Lebanon. Munitions left behind by those attacks continue to kill civilians today,” she said.
Steve Goose, director of the Arms division at Human Rights Watch, said unexploded cluster bomblets have killed and maimed almost 200 people since the war ended.
“The Lebanon story is just the latest example of something we’ve have seen over and over again: Whenever cluster munitions are used, large numbers of civilians get killed and injured,” Goose said.