Qana Death Toll Lowered to 28 with 13 Missing – HRW

The US-based rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has put the death toll from an Israeli air strike at the Lebanese village of Qana at 28 and 13 missing, below the official Lebanese figure of 54 dead.

The incident on July 30 was one of the deadliest strikes in the 23-day-old war between Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah and jolted international efforts to resolve the conflict.

Human Rights Watch said Israel had said the military targeted the house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area. The group said its own researchers who visited Qana on July 31 did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home.

The group said it based its report in part on interviews with two witnesses to the Qana attack, one who was in the building during the strike and a second person who lived in the neighbourhood and assisted in the recovery.

Lebanese rescue worker carries a child killed in the Israeli attack on Qana

“The initial estimate of 54 persons killed was based on a register of 63 persons who had sought shelter in the basement of the building that was struck, and rescue teams having located nine survivors. It now appears that at least 22 people escaped the basement, and 28 are confirmed dead, according to records from the Lebanese Red Cross and the government hospital in Tyre,” Human Right Watch said in a statement. It gave the names and ages of those killed.

The other 13 people were missing and presumed by some Qana residents to be buried in the rubble.

BEIRUT (Haaretz) Aug. 3 — Israel’s military appears to have deliberately bombed civilians in Lebanon and some of its strikes constitute war crimes, according to an U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The comments came as the Israel Defense Forces released the results of an investigation into an air strike on a building in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, killing many civilians. The probe found that the IDF made a mistake, but charges that Hezbollah guerrillas used civilians as shields for their rocket attacks.

HRW said Israel’s contention that Hezbollah fighters were hiding among Lebanese civilians did not justify its “systematic failure” to distinguish between civilians and combatants. “In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.”

“The failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.”

At least 646 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have died in the strikes. The mounting toll, compounded by Sunday’s bombing in Qana, has fuelled international outcry against Israel’s tactics in the three-week-old war.

Israel says its strikes destroy Hezbollah infrastructure and stop rocket attacks that have killed 56 and caused large-scale evacuations in northern Israel.

The reality of it is however, the military in our country; there have been people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan that shouldn’t have been killed. Invariably mistakes will happen and what’s occurred right now in this particular incident (Qana), this particular bombing, is whether the Israelis did it or not, the Israelis are going to get blamed for it.” [Emphasis added]

The United Nations now estimates that up to 900,000 have been displaced in Lebanon but many civilians are still trapped in villages and towns on the frontline.

The BBC’s Fergal Keane visited the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil where scores of houses have been destroyed in some of the most fierce fighting of the current crisis.

The town of Bint Jbeil is no longer a place of the modern world. Here next to a Hezbollah flag, shredded by gunfire, but still flying, we saw for the first time the very worst the war had done.

Southern suburb in Beirut

Nine Israelis were killed in fierce fighting. The Israelis shelled the town into rubble.

In the ruins of houses we found old people trapped by the fighting. One woman was desperate for water.

There were no rescue workers in this part of town so it fell to journalists to carry them out to the ambulances.