Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

was present at the time of attack or was using the hospital for military purposes. 200
One nurse added, “Here in the hospital we did not hear anything [i.e. any fire]
coming out of Tebnine.” 201
A main road runs close to the hospital—a road that Hezbollah fighters may have
been using to transit north-south. However, there is reason to question the legality of
using an area-effect weapon on any target that is even in close proximity to a
hospital. If Israel was targeting Hezbollah combatants using the road, the IDF must
justify why it chose to use cluster munitions to target fighters while they were close
to a protected place and not at some other point on the route.
If it can be shown the Israel indiscriminately or deliberately attacked the hospital
without military justification and with criminal intent, it would amount to a war crime. It
is imperative that Israel conduct a thorough investigation of this incident, make the
results public, identify those responsible for ordering and carrying out the attack, and
hold them responsible for any violations or war crimes should the evidence substantiate
such conclusions. The UN should include investigation of the cluster bombing of
Tebnine within the mandate of the International Commission of Inquiry into reports of
violation of international humanitarian law in Lebanon and Israel that Human Rights
Watch is calling on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to establish.
Yohmor
The IDF heavily bombarded Yohmor, a large village just north of the Litani River, with
cluster munitions in the two days prior to the ceasefire. When Human Rights Watch
researchers first arrived in the town on August 17, 2006, the Lebanese Army and UN
demining groups were destroying cluster duds throughout the town. After two
months of clearance work, when Human Rights Watch returned on October 26, 2006,
unexploded submunitions still lay scattered in Yohmor’s gardens and fields.
Submunitions could be found throughout the village of 7,500 civilians. “People here
can’t move,” Kasim M. `Aleik, the head of Yohmor municipality, told Human Rights
200 Human Rights Watch interview with Musa (last name withheld), nurse, Tebnine Hospital, Tebnine, August 20, 2006;
Human Rights Watch interview with Yousif Fawwaz, mukhtar, Tebnine, October 24, 2006.
201 Human Rights Watch interview with Musa (last name withheld), nurse, Tebnine Hospital, Tebnine, August 20, 2006.
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