Following a particularly deadly Tuesday in which Israel killed at least 14 people, including 13 inside a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, the attacks continued. On Wednesday, multiple additional strikes were reported.
The IDF issued evacuation orders for four villages in southern Lebanon this morning, Deir Kifa, Shahour, Tayr Falsay and Aynata. So far, Deir Kifa and Shahour have been confirmed to have been struck.
The one casualty incident confirmed came separately, in an Israeli strike on the village of al-Tiri. The IDF drone attacked a car and killed the person inside, the village treasurer Bilal Cheaito. The strike also hit a passing school bus, wounding 11 other people, including the driver and 10 students.
The IDF claimed the person killed was “Hezbollah,” though again they offered no evidence for this. They also claimed that Hezbollah was committing “grave violations” in the village of Beit Lif, involving creating command centers inside civilian homes. As usual no evidence was offered here either, though it obviously suits Israel’s policy of destroying civilian homes across southern Lebanon.
That’s a policy that Israel has been implementing since the ceasefire was put in place last year, and it has become a formal proposal since September, as they called for the whole of southern Lebanon to be turned into a totally depopulated “Trump economic zone” which the US and Israel would occupy militarily.
Adding to the disquiet around Israeli war crimes within Lebanon since the ceasefire, the IDF has been found to have been using cluster munitions in their attacks in southern Lebanon. Cluster munitions scatter to maximize casualties, and many bomblets remain unexploded, leading to later killings of civilians who happen upon them.
Their role in killing civilians has led many nations to ban cluster munitions, and while Israel is not a signatory to the Cluster Munitions Convention, the use of these munitions in civilian populated areas where an active ceasefire is in place only adds to the criticism of Israel’s Lebanon policy.
