LEBANON’s prime minister has accused Israel of perpetrating a “heinous crime” in the targeting and killing of civil defence emergency workers, three of whom were among five people killed in a double Israeli strike in southern Lebanon.
Two successive Israeli strikes on a building in the town of Majdal Zoun on Tuesday killed five people, including three rescue workers who went to help those injured in the initial Israeli attack on the targeted building, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said.
“Targeting elements of the Civil Defence in Majdal Zoun, and their killing while carrying out their humanitarian duty, constitutes a new and described war crime perpetrated by Israel,” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a post on social media.
“It represents a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law,” Salam said.
“The government will spare no effort to condemn this heinous crime in international forums and to mobilise all efforts to compel Israel to cease its ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Lebanese Civil Defence told the Reuters news agency that the three rescuers were initially trapped under rubble by the second Israeli strike and were later confirmed to have died in the attack.
The Lebanese army said that two of its troops were also wounded in the second Israeli strike that targeted its forces, the rescue workers and two civilian bulldozers.
According to media reports, Israeli forces attacked a Lebanese military patrol, which was escorting the civil defence workers on the rescue mission at the site of the initial Israeli attack.
Despite a US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to carry out air strikes that kill and injure people on a daily basis, primarily in the south and east of the country.
Hezbollah has responded to the Israeli ceasefire violations by firing rockets and launching drones into Israel and occupied areas of southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun also issued a statement about the killing of the three civil defence personnel, which he said was only the latest in a “series of attacks that targeted relief and first aid workers”.
The killings “indicate that Israel continues to violate international laws and conventions that protect civilians, paramedics, Civil Defence personnel, the Red Cross, and workers in the fields of rescue, first aid, and medicine,” Aoun said.
Earlier this month, Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the international silence around Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza had “only emboldened the Israeli military’s atrocities”.
“Israel’s allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European Union states, should suspend all arms sales, arms transit, and military assistance to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in ongoing grave crimes,” Kaiss said.