United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Wednesday that more than 100 Lebanese civilians have been killed by continued Israeli strikes after an agreed-upon cease-fire, Photo by Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Wednesday that more than 100 Lebanese civilians have been killed by continued Israeli strikes after an agreed-upon cease-fire, and he urged renewed efforts to bring a permanent end to hostilities in Lebanon.
Türk said in a statement that the U.N. Human Rights Office has verified that 103 civilians were killed in Lebanon since the Nov. 27 cease-fire brokered by the United States and France to end a 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah.
He added that the continued suffering inflicted on the population, including killing civilians in the past 10 months, “is tragic and must stop.”
The human rights chief noted that “there have been no reports of killings from projectiles fired from Lebanon toward Israel since the cease-fire.”
According to the statement, the Lebanese Army has counted thousands of Israeli violations of the agreement, while the Israeli Army confirmed carrying out hundreds of airstrikes “on what it claims were Hezbollah targets.”
“We are still seeing devastating impacts of jet and drone strikes in residential areas, as well as near U.N. peacekeepers in the south,” Türk said.
Israel has continued almost daily to strike Lebanon and suspected Hezbollah positions despite the truce accord, killing an additional 300 people, including Hezbollah operatives and civilians.
More than 21,500 people have been killed or wounded during the war that broke out on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah opened a support front for Gaza. Some 1.2 million people were also displaced and border villages in southern Lebanon turned into rubble.
The statement cited the killing of five people, including three children, in an Israeli drone attack targeting a vehicle and a motorcycle in the border area of Bint Jbeil in south Lebanon on Sept. 21 as “one of the deadliest strikes.”
It added that the High Commissioner called for an independent and impartial investigation into that incident and others that “raise concerns about compliance with international humanitarian law.”
“Today, families are simply unable to make a start on rebuilding their homes and their lives, and instead are faced by the real and present danger of more strikes,” Türk said, adding that hundreds of damaged schools, health facilities, places of worship, among other civilian sites, “are still no-go zones, or at best only partly useable.”
He noted that more than 80,000 people remain displaced in Lebanon due to the ongoing violence, while some 30,000 from northern Israel have reportedly not returned to their homes.
Turk urged renewed efforts to bring a permanent end to hostilities in Lebanon, saying the “good faith” implementation of the cease-fire was the only path toward a durable peace.
