Israeli strike that killed 3 journalists was deliberate, watchdog says

Associated Press Beirut An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday. The October 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago. Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.

More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes. Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the October 25 attack using an airdropped bomb equipped with a US-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit. The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military's repeated “unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes.” There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.

The Biden administration said in May that Israel's use of US-provided weapons in the Israel- Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes. The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al- Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV. Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-storey building and detonated upon hitting the floor. “Israel's use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the US as well as Israel.”