900 dead Lebanese - one third of them children

Guardian

As many as 900 Lebanese have been killed by Israel's three-week onslaught, and one million, a quarter of the population, have been forced to flee their homes, said prime minister Fouad Siniora yesterday; a third of the dead are children under 12. Three thousand people had been injured, he added, in a video message to a conference of Islamic countries in Malaysia, which called for an immediate ceasefire.

As the full extent of Lebanon's catastrophe began to emerge yesterday, the US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch accused Israel of war crimes. "In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians ... the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accident and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hizbullah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes," it stated when releasing a study of attacks in Lebanon.

"Israeli forces have fired with war planes and artillery on dozens of civilian vehicles, many flying white flags," it said.

Israel has sought to justify the deaths by saying Hizbullah fighters hide among civilians to fire rockets. HRW says it believes Hizbullah does violate the laws of war by hiding among civilians during military operations, but "the image promoted of such shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong". Read more