A Reuters journalist was killed Friday while reporting from southern Lebanon, and several others were injured, including two from the same news agency. “We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” a Reuters spokesperson said on Friday. Abdallah was part of a Reuters crew in southern Lebanon who were providing a live signal at the time of the strike, the spokesperson said. “We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region, and supporting Issam’s family and colleagues. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time,” the spokesperson said in the statement. Reuters journalists Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh also were injured and are seeking medical care, the spokesperson added. The broadcaster Al Jazeera said that two of its journalists, Karmen Jokhadar and Eli Brakhia, were injured at the same time. Agence France-Presse also reported that two of its team were injured and that the shelling took place after an attempted push into Israel from Lebanon by a Palestinian faction. The AFP named its injured crew as Christina Assi and video journalist Dylan Collins. Details of the incident were not immediately clear.
The Israeli military has carried out strikes on its border with Lebanon in response to rocket and militant attacks. The Reuters journalists are believed to have been hit by one such strike, according to Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera. VOA could not immediately verify if that was the case. The Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan said Friday he had just learned of the attack and that Israel will "always try to mitigate and avoid civilian casualties." Saying that Israeli forces would never want to "kill or shoot any journalist that is doing the job," Erdan said: "We were in a state of war, things might happen. We regret them, we feel sorry. And we will investigate it. Right now, it's too early to call what happened." The conflict playing out in a densely packed region has already led to media casualties. At least 10 other journalists have been killed while reporting from Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s bloody incursion into southern Israel last week, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday the U.N. is concerned by reports of explosions in the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission area of South Lebanon and the “distressing reports” of a journalist being killed and others injured. “Journalists need to be protected and allowed to do their work,” Dujarric said.
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Israel has used white phosphorus in its continuing military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, putting civilians at serious risk, Human Rights Watch has said, following an analysis of video of the conflict.
Human Rights Watch said it verified footage taken in Lebanon and Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, showing multiple uses of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border. Human Rights Watch also interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza, the rights group said. HRW said the use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas violates Israel’s obligation under international law to take all feasible precautions to avoid harm to civilians. “Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” Lama Fakih, HRW’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Wednesday. “White phosphorus is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.” Israel should ban all use of “airburst” white phosphorus munitions in populated areas without exception, the rights group said, noting the availability of non-lethal alternatives. The 'strange' admission, according to the Zionist regime’s Supreme Court president, was made on a petition to disclose materials that detail facts about the massacre committed against Palestinian refugee in the Sabra and Shatila Camp about four decades ago.
A lawyer for the ‘Israeli’ entity’s Mossad spy agency told the Zionist regime’s so-called High Court of Justice on Monday that the agency is having difficulty locating historic documents in its archives relating to ties between the agency and Lebanese Christian militias that carried out massacres at two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in September 1982. The Mossad lawyer, Omri Epstein, made the claim at a hearing on a petition filed by dozens of human rights advocates who have been seeking the disclosure of documents demonstrating Mossad’s links in the 1970s and 1980s to Lebanese Christian militias that committed the massacres at the Palestinian refugees’ camp. In comments to the Mossad’s claim, court president Esther Hayut, who heads the panel hearing the case, described it as “strange.”. At the hearing, Epstein alleged that the agency’s current ability to locate the documents “in the way in which they are stored, as well as the capability to locate documents for such an inclusive request spanning eight years, is limited and difficult.”. Hayut noted that the spy agency is legally required to preserve the documents, which are to be opened to the public after 90 years. “The assumption is that until the 90 years have elapsed, you need to preserve the material – so what does it mean that it’s difficult for you to locate them?” she asked. Epstein responded that behind closed doors and on an ex parte basis – meaning without the presence of the representatives of the human rights advocates – he would be able to explain at further length “how the material is maintained in the Mossad archives.”. In his petition, Eitay Mack, the lawyer representing the petitioners, alleged that about 40 years had so far elapsed “since the Mossad was responsible for ‘Israel’s’ support for murderous militias that committed atrocities in Lebanon. Nevertheless, the Mossad still believes that it is its right to conceal the information relating to them from the public.”. Mack said that the 1982 massacre “was just one of a series of massacres, executions, abductions, disappearances, dismemberment and abuse of bodies that the Christian militias carried out.” The nondisclosure of historic documents was the subject of another High Court case that was decided about two months ago, involving a request by researchers from the Taub Center for ‘Israel’ Studies at New York University to review documents in the archives related to the establishment of Zionist settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. |
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