Lebanese PM slams Israel’s war crimes as attack kills 3 rescue workers

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has accused Israel of perpetrating heinous war crimes as two successive air strikes on a building in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed five people, including three rescuers who went ‌to help those wounded in the initial attack, Lebanon’s health ministry said. A spokesperson for the Lebanese Civil Defense, a state-run rescue force, told Reuters the three rescuers were initially trapped under rubble by the second Israeli strike on the town of Majdal Zoun and were later confirmed dead. “Targeting elements of the Civil Defence in Majdal Zoun, and their killing while carrying out their humanitarian duty, constitutes a new and described war crime perpetrated by Israel,” Prime Minister Salam said in a post on social media. “It represents a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law,” Salam said. “The government will spare no effort to condemn this heinous crime in international forums and to mobilise all efforts to compel Israel to cease its ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement,” he said. Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun also issued a statement about the killing of the three civil defense personnel, which he said was only the latest in a “series of attacks that targeted relief and first aid workers”. The killings “indicate that Israel continues to violate international laws and conventions that protect civilians, paramedics, Civil Defense personnel, the Red Cross, and workers in the fields of rescue, first aid, and medicine,” Aoun said. A spokesperson for the Lebanese Civil Defense told the Reuters news agency that the three rescuers were initially trapped under rubble by the ⁠second Israeli strike and were later confirmed to have died. The Lebanese army said that two of its troops were also wounded in the second Israeli strike that targeted its forces, the rescue workers and two civilian bulldozers. According to media reports, Israeli forces attacked a Lebanese military patrol, which was escorting the civil defense workers on the rescue mission at the site of the initial Israeli attack. Despite a US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to carry out air strikes that kill and injure people on a daily basis, primarily in the south and east of the country. Earlier this month, Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the international silence around Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza had “only emboldened the Israeli military’s atrocities”. “Israel’s allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European Union states, should suspend all arms sales, arms transit, and military assistance to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in ongoing grave crimes,” Kaiss said. “Civilians are paying the price of the international community’s silence and unwillingness to hold Israeli officials to account.” The United Nations Human Rights office said last month that Israeli airstrikes on civilians including healthcare workers in Lebanon may amount to war crimes. More than 2,500 people have been killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon since March 2, when Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired on Israeli positions and triggered a widespread Israeli air and ground campaign. The toll includes more than 100 ‌medics, ⁠as well as over 270 women and more than 170 children. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has kept up its drone and ⁠rocket attacks against Israeli troops in Lebanon and on northern Israel. Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had found and dismantled tunnels in southern Lebanon used by Hezbollah. — Agencies