26 July 2006
Written by Rainer
Israel is now targeting UN observers and using clusterbombs on civilian villages
I really wonder how long Israel is allowed to “just do what it wants”? How many civilian and UN casualties we need before EU takes action?
A Finnish UN observer is believed to have been killed [link: FIN | ENG] yesterday in Israel’s airstrike to the city of Khiam. Israel stroke to a light UN bomb shelter where apparently four UN observers from Finland, Austria, China and Canada were sheltered. So far they have found three bodies from the ruins of the bomb shelter.
A representative of Finnish Army’s foreign operations explained that the observers didn’t have a chance because they are not armed - isn’t this the point of UN observers? - and are carrying only personal equipment. The bomb shelter wasn’t built to withstand a full force airstrike because the base assumption is that the UN bomb shelters are not targeted. The UN bomb shelters locations are always clearly marked and Israel had promised to not to attack them -how ardent of them.
Kofi Annan has requested a detailed explanation from Israel of the deliberate strike. So far Israel has apologized for the inconvenience explaining that they weren’t aiming for the UN observers -they were aiming?- and promised to investigate the issue.
The Human Rights Watch organization is blaming Israel of using cluster bombs on the bombings of Lebanese villages. The organization claims to have pictures of Israeli artillery being loaded with cluster bombs when they were bombing village of Blida.
According to international regulations using cluster bombs against civilian targets is forbidden because they tend to be inaccurate and leave unexploded grenades -isn’t this the point of clusterbombs?- to the ground.
Again, Israel promised to investigate the issue, but stated that they don’t consider the international law is forbidding using clusterbombs.
Apparently Israel wasn’t even ignorant of the fact that there was unarmed UN observers in the zone. According to BBC and about every other news source, they had contacted Israel four times, four times!, pleading to stop bombing them and every time Israel had promised that they will. Well fifth time never came…