The Israeli military on Wednesday said it struck an underground storage facility in the southern suburbs of Beirut which it said contained weapons belonging to the Hezbollah militia.
The army said that the strike on Dahiyeh was carried out after “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warning to the population in the area.’’
It added that it had “precise intelligence that strategic weapons’’ belonging to Hezbollah had been stockpiled in the facility.
Last week, human rights watchdog Amnesty International criticised evacuation warnings issued by the Israeli military to Dahiyeh residents and of other areas in Lebanon as “inadequate’’ and in some cases “misleading.”
“The warnings issued by the Israeli military to residents of Dahiyeh, the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut, were inadequate,’’ Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in a statement.
“Our analysis shows that not only did the warnings issued by the Israeli military include misleading maps.
“They were also issued at short notice in one instance less than 30 minutes before strikes began in the middle of the night, via social media.
“When many people would be asleep, offline or not following media reports,’’ Callamard added.
Amnesty International pointed out that these warnings do not absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law to never target civilians and to take all possible measures to minimise harm to them.
More than 2,350 people have been killed and almost 11,000 others injured in Lebanon since fighting broke out between the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia and the Israeli military just over a year ago.
This is according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The ministry does not distinguish between Hezbollah members and civilians in its list. (dpa/NAN)
