Following the Qana massacre on Sunday, the Israeli government announed very early Monday morning that it would cease airstrikes on southern Lebanon in order to allow for an investigation of the incident and to give residents the ability to evacuate the region safely.
But the IDF is still attacking.
Via AP:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to a 48-hour halt in the airstrikes beginning at 2 a.m. Monday while the military concludes its inquiry into the attack on the south Lebanese village of Qana.
But Israel left open the option it might hit targets to stop imminent attacks or if the military completed its inquiry within 48 hours.
Monday's airstrikes near the village of Taibe were meant to protect ground forces operating in the area and were not targeting anyone or anything specific, the army said.
In a second airstrike around the port city of Tyre, Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car that it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official, the Israeli army said. Lebanese security officials said the soldier was killed by a rocket strike from a drone aircraft.
The Israeli army justified the action, saying the leader believed to have been in the car was a threat to Israel. Instead, the car was carrying a Lebanese army officer and soldiers.
And while some people are trying to make their way out of the area, journalist Robert Fisk reporting from Lebanon told the CBC on Monday that the IDF is, in fact, blocking some convoys from getting through to safety.
- Human Rights Watch: Indiscriminate Bombing in Lebanon a War Crime.
Human Rights Watch researchers have been in Lebanon since the onset of the current hostilities and have documented dozens of cases in which Israeli forces have carried out indiscriminate attacks against civilians while in their homes or traveling on roads to flee the fighting. A report of these findings and their legal consequences will be issued later this week.
Note: HRW also has this to say about Hezbollah's actions:
Human Rights Watch has also documented Hezbollah’s deliberate and indiscriminate firing of Katyusha rockets into civilian areas in Israel, resulting in 18 civilian deaths to date. These serious violations of international humanitarian law are also war crimes.
“War crimes by one party to a conflict never justify war crimes by another,” Roth said.
- Amnesty International has a summary of applicable international humanitarian laws on its site.
- Qana Last Time: 'Just a bunch of [dead] Arabs'.
- Lebanese Civilians Bear the Brunt of Israel's Destruction.
- Israel will 'expand and deepen its actions against Hezbollah'.
"We cannot agree to an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon because then we will find ourselves in a few months in a similar situation," Peretz told a heated parliamentary debate during which four Israeli Arab lawmakers were escorted out for heckling. One Knesset member called Peretz a murderer.
- Update: The Israeli government has just approved the widening of its ground attack in Lebanon.
- CNN reports that 15,000 IDF reservists have been called up according to Israeli radio.
- News from Syria:
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian military on Monday to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel.
more to come...
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