At around 2 p.m. on November 1, 2024, an Israeli strike on the al-Salah neighborhood in Younine, Lebanon, destroyed a two-story building.
Ali Salah lived in the same neighborhood at the time of the attack. He lost 10 family members in one strike by the Israeli forces.
Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed Salah in February this year, after visiting the site of attack.
Ali Salah said that those killed in the strike included his sisters, Wadha and Fairouz; his brothers-in-law: Haidar Mahdi Salah and Mohammad Mahdi Salah; his nieces, Elissar and Zeina; his nephew Ali Haidar Salah and his wife, Nour Boudaq, his one-year-old son, Haidar, and his mother-in-law, Um Bachir Boudaq.
They all had ordinary lives, ordinary jobs. Haidar worked as a painter, Mohammad as a Taxi driver. The strike came shortly after Mohammad returned home after finishing his shift as a taxi driver.
“There’s no one I value more than my sisters. If I thought there was any reason for there to be a military target here, I would have forced them to leave. There was nothing here. Just civilians,” Ali Salah said.
Between October 2023 and December 2024, Israeli attacks in Lebanon killed more than 4,000 people and displaced over one million.
Since the November 2024 ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect, Israeli attacks have reportedly killed at least 146 people in Lebanon.
HRW conducted open-source research on the strike that killed Ali Salah’s family members, to determine if they were combatants. We did not find any evidence indicating the presence of combatants or a military objective at the site of the strike. All individuals interviewed said that no evacuation warning was given to residents prior to the strike.
HRW also investigated another Israeli airstrike on Younine from September; both attacks combined killed 33 civilians, 15 of them children and were apparent indiscriminate attacks on civilians. At least one attack used an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit.
The US government’s provision of arms to Israel, which have repeatedly been used to carry out apparent war crimes, has made the US complicit in their unlawful use.
Under international humanitarian law, all parties to the conflict are obligated, at all times, to distinguish between combatants and civilians. – Apparently, Israeli forces did not do that.
When carrying out any attack, warring parties must take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and damage to civilian objects. This includes taking all necessary actions to verify that targets are military objectives. – Apparently, Israeli forces did not do that.
Therefore, both attacks should be investigated as war crimes.
Victims and survivors deserve justice.
Lebanon’s government should provide a path for justice for grieving families, including by giving the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes.
All countries – including the US, the UK, Canada, and Germany – should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel.