The Israeli army and Lebanon's
Hizbullah
group both violated the laws of war during their 34-day conflict this summer, Human Rights Watch has said in its annual report.
"In its conduct of hostilities, the Israel Defense Forces repeatedly violated the laws of war by failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians," the US-based rights group said Thursday.
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"The IDF claims that the high proportion of civilian deaths in the war was due to Hizbullah hiding its rockets and fighters in villages and towns, but IDF attacks responsible for a majority of the civilian deaths took place at times when there was no evidence that Hizbullah fighters or weapons were even in the vicinity," the report said.
"While the IDF in certain cases gave advance warnings for civilians to evacuate areas likely to be attacked, such warnings do not relieve a warring party of its obligation to target only combatants," it added.
The war in July and August between Israel
and Hizbullah killed more than 1,100 Lebanese, a majority of them civilians, wounded more than 4,000 others, and displaced an estimated one million people, HRW said.
Since many people in southern Lebanon had remained in their homes even after the Israeli warnings, "the IDF's indiscriminate bombardment had devastating consequences for civilians."
"Israel's extensive use of cluster munitions also continues to be a pressing concern. The UN has estimated that Israel fired cluster munitions containing 2.6 to four million submunitions into Lebanon, leaving behind as many as one million hazardous duds that, at this writing, had resulted in more than 20 deaths and 100 injuries, many of them serious.
"According to the UN, Israel blanketed much of southern Lebanon with 90 percent of those submunitions in the last three days before the ceasefire."
The report also did not spare the Hizbullah Shiite
group, saying that it launched thousands of rockets on cities, towns and villages in northern Israel, packing many of them with "ball bearings" for maximum impact.
The group also "fired Chinese-made cluster rockets," it said.
"While Hizbullah appeared to target some of its rockets at military objectives, in some cases hitting them, many of its rockets hit civilian areas, far from any apparent military target.
"Such attacks -- at best indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and, at worst, deliberate attacks against civilians – violated the laws of war."
Hizbullah rockets killed 39 civilians and injured hundreds more in Israel, the report said. Some 119 soldiers were also killed.
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