Civilians in vehicles in southern Lebanon are everywhere and always at risk from Israeli drones, and there have been an increasing number of such drones flying overhead in a lot of southern villages.
Wednesday, that led to multiple Israeli drone strikes against a car in the waste dump on the outskirts of Ras Naqoura. Two civilians, who were there collecting scrap metal, were wounded in the strikes and have been taken to a hospital.
Ras Naqoura is a coastal village not far from the Israeli border. The outskirts of the village also have a UNIFIL peacekeeper location, though it does not appear the peacekeepers were involved in this particular Israeli attack.
Unsurprisingly, the IDF’s official account of what happened was starkly different from them attacking a couple of guys collecting scrap metal at the dump. The IDF declared them and the car to be a “Hezbollah arms transport” and claimed they attacked the car because the men were loading weapons into the vehicle.
This may well actually mean that they were loading scrap metal, which they were collecting, into the car, which was mistaken for weaponry. That’s not unprecedented, as in late January Israel attacked a vegetable truck full of vegetables in Nabatieh, wounding dozens of civilians, and similarly claimed it was a “Hezbollah truck” and those vegetables were actually weapons.
Whatever the case, Israel is presenting the scrap metal collectors as a ceasefire violation. The drone strike, of course, is contrary to the terms of the ceasefire, which adds to a massive number of Israeli violations committed in recent months.
There has been growing international concern surrounding Israel’s violations, in particular their proclivity to attack healthcare workers and ambulances. Amnesty International is calling for an investigation into such attacks, saying it believes they could amount to a war crime.
Amnesty made the calls after looking into multiple Israeli attacks on ambulances in October. Israel has not responded to the new call but has repeatedly claimed ambulances are secretly transporting Hezbollah members.
