Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing

Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing 
Independent International Inquiry Required
(Beirut, August 3, 2006) – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inquiry into
the July 30 killing of at least 28 civilians in Qana is incomplete and
legally misguided, and contradicts eyewitness testimony, Human Rights
Watch said today. The findings underline the need for an independent
international inquiry into what took place.
 The Israeli military’s explanation of what happened raises more questions
than it answers. Crucial information is missing to determine what led the
IDF to attack these civilians. Only an independent international
investigation can get at that. 
 
 
 
“The Israeli military’s explanation of what happened raises more questions
than it answers,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights
Watch. “Crucial information is missing to determine what led the IDF to
attack these civilians. Only an independent international investigation
can get at that.”  
 
The IDF announced today that it targeted the building “in accordance with
the military’s guidelines regarding the use of fire against suspicious
structures.” Since July 12, Hezbollah fighters had launched more than 150
rockets from Qana and the surrounding area, the IDF said. The military
said it attacked based on information that “the building was not inhabited
by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists.”  
 
But the IDF failed to provide important details about the attack, Human
Rights Watch said. First, it did not say whether it believed that
Hezbollah fighters were in or around the building at the time of or
directly prior to the attack, which would potentially make the building a
legitimate target. Its failure even to make this claim suggests that
fighters were not present.  
 
That conclusion was supported by two eyewitnesses interviewed by Human
Rights Watch, who said that Hezbollah was not in the area when the attack
took place. Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana the day after
the attack found no destroyed military equipment in or near the home. None
of the international journalists, rescue workers and international
observers who visited the scene has yet reported seeing evidence of
Hezbollah military presence in the area, and rescue workers have not yet
recovered any bodies identifiable as Hezbollah fighters.  
 
Second, the IDF did not clarify why it believed that Hezbollah fighters
were in the building, rather than civilians. According to Muhammad Mahmud
Shalhub, who was in the basement during the attack, 63 members of the
extended Shalhub and Hashim families sought shelter in the building when
the first Israeli bombs hit Qana in the early evening of July 29. It
remains unclear why the IDF, with superior aerial surveillance, did not
know the families were there.  
 
“Why did the Israeli military consider the building ‘suspicious’?” Roth
asked. “What information did it have to reach that conclusion?”  
 
The IDF also repeated previous statements that it had warned Qana
residents to evacuate, thereby suggesting that it was the victims’ fault
because they chose to remain. But in Qana and other villages in southern
Lebanon, thousands of residents have been unable to leave the area because
they are sick, wounded, do not have the means to leave or they fear
Israeli attacks on vehicles.  
 
“The Israeli military cannot warn people to leave and then attack at
will,” Roth said. “The warnings are not an excuse to shoot blindly at
anyone who remains.”  
 
In a report issued today, “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks
Against Civilians in Lebanon,” Human Rights Watch documented a systematic
failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians. In
some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a
military target, as well as subsequent strikes on rescuers, suggest that
Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.  
 
Of all the cases of civilian casualties included in the report, Human
Rights Watch found, none involved Hezbollah deliberately using civilians
as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah has
occasionally stored weapons in or near civilian homes and placed rocket
launchers within populated areas or near United Nations observers. Such
acts are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the
duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.
However, those violations did not account for the many deaths recorded in
the Human Rights Watch report. Nor do those cases justify the IDF’s
extensive use of indiscriminate force, which has cost so many civilian
lives. 
-- 
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Qana, the director's cut:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/qana-directors-cut.html

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