Hizbullah guilty of war crimes says Amnesty

Hizbullah committed war crimes in its conflict with Israel by targeting civilians with rockets packed with metal ball bearings…

Hizbullah committed war crimes in its conflict with Israel by targeting civilians with rockets packed with metal ball bearings, Amnesty International has said.

The fact that Israel has also committed serious violations in no way justifies violations by Hizbullah.
Amnesty International

It said around a quarter of the nearly 4,000 rockets that Hizbullah launched into Israel during the 34-day war were fired directly into urban areas.

"The scale of Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli cities, towns and villages, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used and statements from the leadership confirming their intent to target civilians make it all too clear that Hizbullah violated the laws of war," Amnesty secretary-general Irene Khan said.

"The fact that Israel has also committed serious violations in no way justifies violations by Hizbullah," she said in a statement. "Civilians must not be made to pay the price for unlawful conduct on either side."

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Amnesty's criticism comes three weeks after the group aimed similar charges at Israel.

It said Israel purposely destroyed food shops by shelling and air attacks, deliberately blocked aid convoys and put hospitals and public utilities like water and power plants out of action to force people to flee.

Israel says it did not target civilians and had warned non-combatants to leave south Lebanon.

More than 1,350 people died during the war. Most of them were civilians killed in southern Lebanon. Some 150, mostly soldiers, were Israelis.

The Hizbullah rocket attacks forced between 350,000 and a million northern Israelis to flee their homes, Amnesty said. The hundreds of thousands who remained behind spent much of the war in bomb shelters. A million Lebanese were also displaced.