UN calls for investigation into deadly Israeli airstrike in Northern Lebanon

The United Nations’ human rights office called on Tuesday for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike a day earlier that killed at least 21 people in northern Lebanon, saying it posed “real concerns” because it may have violated international laws governing war.

“We understand it was a four-story residential building that was struck,” Jeremy Laurence, a spokesperson for the UN’s human rights office, said at a news briefing in Geneva. The UN had received reports that most of the deaths were of women and children, he said, and added that the strike might have breached laws designed to minimize civilian harm in conflicts.

The Israeli military said without elaborating that it had struck a Hezbollah target and that it was looking into reports that Lebanese civilians had been killed. “The incident is being examined,” it said in a statement.

The Israeli strike on Monday in the normally sleepy hill village of Aitou, more than 70 miles from the Israeli border, was the first known time since the war began a year ago that the largely Christian region had been hit. The region lies far from Hezbollah’s traditional power bases in southern and eastern Lebanon, and the strike has heightened growing fears that no area in the country is safe.

Rema Jamous Imseis, the UN refugee agency’s Middle East director, said Tuesday that more than a quarter of Lebanese territory had come under Israeli evacuation orders. Nearly 1 million people in Lebanon have already been displaced, according to the United Nations.

“People are heeding these calls to evacuate,” Jamous said, “and they’re fleeing with almost nothing.”