Israel has announced that they are sending another division of ground troops into southern Lebanon as part of an invasion that began earlier this month and which earlier this week Defense Minister Israel Katz said would include the occupation of the entire area south of the Litani River.
This is the fifth division to be sent into Lebanon since the invasion began, and a sixth division, the 98th Division, is reportedly being prepared to be deployed as well. Occupying such a large amount of territory is no small task, despite efforts to depopulate the area ahead of time.
Human rights groups are expressing growing disquiet about how much of Israel’s focus inside southern Lebanon is about wiping out towns and villages and setting the stage for open-ended displacement of the hundreds of thousands of civilians that live there.
Map of southern Lebanon | Image from Wikimedia
Since the war began, Israel has been documented as repeatedly using white phosphorus munitions to target civilian infrastructure, with Lebanon’s National News Agency documenting attacks against multiple new villages today using phosphorus artillery.
Israel has killed roughly 1,100 people since the war escalated, and has displaced more than a million people. They have also destroyed all the bridges spanning the Litani River after having ordered the population out of that region, effectively ensuring that they won’t be able to return any time soon.
Strikes have increasingly targeted paramedics and journalists in recent days, with dozens of paramedics having been killed in recent weeks. Two were killed Tuesday in Nabatieh. Also in Nabatieh, the Israeli forces attacked and killed a freelance journalist on Wednesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement calling on Israel to immediately end its attacks on the press and uphold its obligations under international law. The IDF has yet to comment on the latest killings.
