A U.S.-based human rights group has charged both Israel and Hezbollah with deliberately targeting civilian areas during last month’s cross-border fighting.
At a news conference Wednesday in Jerusalem, officials from Human Rights Watch said both sides had “exhibited willful disregard of humanitarian law by directly targeting civilians” to obtain their military objectives.
Israel was sharply criticized by the United Nations last month, after it fired artillery shells on the Kana U.N. base in southern Lebanon, killing at least 91 Lebanese civilians.
Israel maintained that it had no prior knowledge that refugees had taken shelter there and that their deaths were accidental.
In meetings with Human Rights Watch representatives, Israeli officials stressed that there were standing regulations in the Israel Defense Force not to target civilians.
The IDF also said that Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel’s code-name for the 16-day shelling of Lebanon last month, was undertaken in self-defense after Hezbollah launched repeated Katyusha rocket assaults no northern Israeli communities.
Hezbollah officials said in Beirut that they would study the report’s findings.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
