As Israel continues to flaunt the November ceasefire with daily strikes on Lebanon, the United Nations has stepped up with new data on what is happening. A report from the UN Human Rights Office confirms that they have verified at least 103 of the people killed in the Israeli strikes were civilians.
UN Rights Chief Volker Turk says they “are still seeing devastating impacts of jet and drone strikes in residential areas, as well as near UN peacekeepers in the south.” He added that hundred of damaged hospitals and schools, hit during last year’s Israeli invasion, remain effectively “no-go zones” and that locals have been unable to safely start the reconstruction process.
Though Israel has largely not admitted to any civilian deaths, the fact that there were some is clearly not news, as consistently the strikes have involved killing women and children, plainly not combatants by any stretch of the imagination.
Recent photo of destruction in Ain Baal, Southern Lebanon ©MSF
The high number though stands in stark contrast to the IDF’s narrative, as they claimed back at the end of July that all 230 people they’d killed were “Hezbollah terrorists.” The overall death toll isn’t known at this time, but is likely approaching 300, so around a third of all deaths have now been verified to be civilians.
Even beyond that 103, that is not to say that all the remaining deaths were verified as Hezbollah, only that they’ve yet to be verified as civilians. A huge number of the overall slain have yet to be publicly identified at all, and while Israel makes claims of virtually all of them being top Hezbollah leaders, they almost never offer any evidence to that effect.
In May, for instance, the IDF killed a municipal worker while he was repairing a water well, and then declared the slain worker as “Hezbollah terrorist.” The claim was echoed unquestioned in the Israeli press, though they never offered evidence that he was such, and the mayor of the town where the attack took place insisted he was just a city worker fixing a well, for which there is ample evidence.
There are reasons to believe the overall civilian toll is ultimately considerably higher, as the UN had reported back in April that their initial assessment was 71 civilians at that time, and it is only after rigorous investigation that they’re able to offer final numbers, with a substantial number remaining wholly unidentified.
Israeli strikes continued today with an attack on the southern town of Kafra. Details are still emerging and a final toll has yet to be confirmed by the Lebanese Health Ministry, but at least one person was killed in the drone strike, and a number of others were reportedly wounded.
