A firefighter at the site of a strike near Dhour al-Abadieh (Aley) on Nov. 12, 2024. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Four Israeli strikes in Lebanon, killing at least 49 civilians and wiping out entire families, were carried out on residential buildings without warning, and still without the slightest evidence of having targeted military targets, revealed a report by Amnesty International on Thursday, Dec. 12. The NGO documented strikes carried out in al-Ain (Bekaa) on Sept. 29, Aito (North Lebanon) on Oct. 14, Baalbeck on Oct. 21 and the attack on the headquarters of the municipality of Nabatieh (South Lebanon) on Oct. 16.
After investigating the scene, analyzing satellite imagery and dozens of photos and videos from local sources, and interviewing 35 survivors and witnesses, Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open an investigation into Israeli “war crimes” for what it describes as “deliberate harm” to civilians.
“These four attacks are emblematic of Israel’s shocking disregard for civilian lives in Lebanon and its willingness to flout international law,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, an Amnesty official.
Families decimated
In Al-Ain and Baalbeck, two families were wiped out in overnight Israeli strikes on their homes, although Amnesty International found no evidence of military targets in the buildings or their immediate surroundings.
In al-Ain, the Israeli strike destroyed the house of the Syrian al-Shaar family, killing its nine members, at around 4:50 a.m. The village mukhtar told the NGO: "It is a civilian house, there is no military target in this house. It is full of children. This family is well known in the village." On Oct. 21, at around 5:45 a.m., a building in the Nabi Inaam neighborhood in Baalbeck was directly targeted, killing six members of the Osman family, two women and four children, and injuring the other seven.
Fatima Drai, who lost her two sons, Hassan (5) and Hussein (3) in the attack, gave a poignant testimony to the NGO: “My son woke me up, he was thirsty and wanted to drink. I gave him some water, he went back to bed hugging his brother … I smiled and told myself that I would tell his father how our son was when he came back. I went to pray, and then everything around me exploded. A gas cylinder exploded, burning my feet and, in a few seconds, it consumed my children’s room.”
23 for one
On Oct. 14, an unprecedented Israeli strike targeted a building in Aito (Zgharta), more than 115 kilometers from the southern border. It killed 23 civilians displaced from south Lebanon, and a man named Ahmad Fakih, the presumed target of the attack, whom survivors of the attack believe to be linked to Hezbollah. It was shortly after the man arrived in the house that Israel bombed it, with an Mk-80 series aerial bomb, a bomb weighing at least 500 pounds (227 kilos), Amnesty said. However, at the scene, the NGO only found "children's books, toys, clothes and kitchen utensils" among the rubble of the destroyed house.
The youngest victim was Aline, a five-month-old baby, who was thrown from the house into a nearby truck and found by rescuers the day after the attack. One survivor, Jinane Hijazi, who lost her 11-month-old daughter, Rouqayya Issa, told the NGO: “I lost everything, my whole family, my parents, my brothers and sisters, my daughter. I wish I had died that day too.”
Even if Israel did aim to target Ahmad Fakih, Amnesty is calling for the attack to be investigated as a war crime, given the "means and methods" used by Israel.
Nabatieh municipal headquarters bombed
Lastly, Amnesty looked at the strike on Oct. 16 on the municipal headquarters of Nabatieh, taking place at a time when the municipality's crisis unit was meeting to coordinate aid deliveries, including food, water and medicine, for displaced people fleeing the bombing further south.
The Israeli strike killed 11 civilians, including the mayor, and injured at least three others. The NGO found no evidence of a military target at the municipal headquarters at the time of the attack.
Israeli strikes on Lebanon have caused more than 4,000 deaths since October 2023, according to a provisional report from the Ministry of Health.