BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- A human rights organization said Hezbollah's 2006 rocket attacks on northern Israel deliberately targeted civilian areas, killing 39 people.
The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch said Hezbollah's explanation that the attacks on Israeli towns were a response to indiscriminate Israeli fire into southern Lebanon and to draw Israel into a ground war have no legal basis under the laws of war.
"Hezbollah’s explanations for why it fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population utterly fail to justify these unlawful attacks,"Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division," said Thursday in a release.
Human Rights Watch said its 128-page report presents more than 20 case studies based on extensive field research in northern Israel into rocket attacks that killed or injured civilians in Jewish, Arab and mixed villages, towns and cities.
The rockets killed at least 39 Israeli civilians during the conflict and inflicted moderate or serious injuries on 101 more, the report said.
