Rights group says 7 killed in March IDF strike on southern Lebanon were aid workers, not terrorists

Human Rights Watch says its probe of an Israeli strike in south Lebanon in March that killed seven people found they were emergency workers and not terrorists.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 onslaught on southern Israel.

“An Israeli strike on an emergency and relief center” in south Lebanon’s Habariyeh on March 27 “killed seven emergency and relief volunteers” and “was an unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions,” HRW says in a statement.

“If the attack on civilians was carried out intentionally or recklessly, it should be investigated as an apparent war crime,” it adds.

Israel’s military said at the time the target was “a military compound” and that the strike killed a “significant terrorist operative” from Jamaa al-Islamiya, a Lebanese group close to Hamas, and other “terrorists.”

All seven were members of the terror group, according to the Israeli military.

HRW says in the statement that it found “no evidence of a military target at the site,” and said the Israeli strike “targeted a residential structure that housed the Emergency and Relief Corps of the Lebanese Succour Association, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization.”

Jamaa al-Islamiya later denied it was connected to the emergency responders, and the rescue group told AFP it had no affiliation with any Lebanese political organization.

HRW said that “the Israeli military’s admission” it had targeted the center in Habariyeh indicated a “failure to take all feasible precautions to verify that the target was military and avoid loss of civilian life… making the strike unlawful.”

The rights group said those killed were volunteers, adding that 18-year-old twin brothers were among the dead.

“Family members… the Lebanese Succour Association, and the civil defense all said that the seven men were civilians and not affiliated with any armed group,” it added.

However, it noted that social media content suggested at least two of those killed “may have been supporters” of Jamaa al-Islamiya.