Weaponizing ordinary devices violates international law, United Nations rights chief says

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Weaponizing ordinary devices violates international law, United Nations rights chief says

2024-09-21 10:57 Last Updated At：11:00

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Weaponizing ordinary communication devices represents a new development in warfare, and targeting thousands of Lebanese people using pagers, two-way radios and electronic equipment without their knowledge is a violation of international human rights law, the United Nations human rights chief said Friday.

Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the two attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday where these devices exploded, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.

“Those who ordered and carried out these attacks must be held to account,” he said.

Lebanon has blamed Israel for the attacks, which appeared to target Hezbollah militants but also saw many civilian casualties, including children. Hezbollah has fought many conflicts with Israel, including a war in 2006, and it has conducted near-daily strikes against Israel to support Hamas militants who attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

Before the council meeting, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon was asked by reporters about speculation Israel was behind the two explosions.

“We are not commenting on the specific attacks you mentioned, but I can tell you that we will do everything we can to target those terrorists to minimize casualties for civilians,” he replied.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib accused Israel of terrorizing the entire Lebanese population on streets, in markets, shops and their homes where their communications devices exploded.

He held up a photo of a mangled and bloodied hand, telling ambassadors from the 15 council nations: “Look at the ugliness of what has happened in this picture.”

Bouhabib insisted that Israel not only launched the attacks but told the council there were “official declarations” and a tweet by an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that was lately deleted, emphasizing the responsibility of Israel and praising the positive results of this assault.”

He appeared to be referring to a deleted tweet by Netanyahu adviser Topaz Luke, who reportedly retweeted a post that included a reply indicating that Israel was behind the attacks in Lebanon and neighboring Syria.

Israel’s Danon criticized the Lebanese minister for never mentioning Hezbollah and said the Lebanese people are “trapped in the grip of this terrorist organization.”

Lebanon’s Bouhabib warned the council that if it doesn’t condemn the week’s deadly explosions and name Israel as the perpetrator, a “Pandora’s Box” will be opened, and governments and extremists will target, terrorize and kill civilians with similar communications devices on trains, planes and elsewhere.

Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the explosions not only violated international human rights law but also appear to violate international humanitarian law’s key principles in carrying out attacks: distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality, and precautions.

International law also prohibits the use of booby-trap devices that look harmless, he said, and “it is a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians.”

“Let me be clear — this method of warfare may be new and unfamiliar,” Türk said, “but international humanitarian and human rights law apply regardless and must be upheld.”

Israel’s Danon blamed Iran and its “puppet” Hezbollah for the military action across the Lebanon-Israel border.

“While Israel is not seeking a wider conflict, let me be clear: We will not allow Hezbollah to continue its provocations,” he said. Israel will do “whatever it takes” to return its 60,000 citizens who fled their homes in the north because of attacks, “and we will not allow Hezbollah’s terror to dictate the future of our nation.”

Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani countered that “Israel bears full responsibility for the perpetration of such horrific crimes,” and said his government will pursue accountability for the attack on the country’s ambassador to Lebanon, whose eyes were injured in the explosions Tuesday.

He said the gravity of the attacks against the Lebanese people must also be seen as “a threat to peace and security across the region.” He added that “the international community must not ignore the role the Western countries, in particular the United States and U.K., play in enabling Israel’s aggressions.”

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo warned the council that the explosions along with more than 11 months of bloodshed in Gaza, and near-daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, pose a grave risk to security and stability in the region.

She urged all actors to exercise maximum restraint, and she strongly urged countries with influence on the parties “to leverage it now.”

Earlier, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric urged Israel and Hezbollah to immediately return to the cessation of hostilities that existed before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel and Israel's responding military campaign in Gaza, warning that “the region is on the brink of a catastrophe” and a diplomatic solution should be pursued urgently.

Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens

2024-10-14 20:15 Last Updated At：20:20

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.

The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.

Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.

Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.

Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.

The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.

That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law.

The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it's unclear whether it has been adopted. The military says it has not received such orders.

Israeli rights groups on Monday called on the international community to prevent Israel from carrying out the plan, saying there are “alarming signs” that Israel is beginning to implement it.

The statement, signed by B'Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, warned that states “have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer."

With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to strike Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out regionwide war.

A Hezbollah aerial attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others Sunday, the military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defense systems during the assault by drones.

Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. It’s rare for so many people to be wounded by drones or missiles, most of which are intercepted by Israel's multitiered air defenses or fall in open areas.

Magdy reported from Cairo.

Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

Weaponizing ordinary devices violates international law, United Nations rights chief says

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Weaponizing ordinary devices violates international law, United Nations rights chief says

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