UN human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent probe into an Israeli airstrike that hit an apartment block in northern Lebanon – a day earlier – that left 22 people dead.
“What we’re hearing is that amongst the 22 people who were killed were 12 women and two children,” said Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“We understand it was a four-storey residential building that was struck,” Laurence explained, adding that OHCHR would call for an independent and thorough investigation into this incident.
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Since the Israeli military escalated its offensive against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon last month whose deadly rocket attacks into Israel have not stopped, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that the death toll in Lebanon is now more than 2,200.
That number “continues to climb as the situation becomes more dramatic”, said Rema Jamous Imseis, UNHCR Director for the Middle East.
Over 10,000 people have also been injured amid Israeli airstrikes and Israeli evacuation orders that have left more than 25 per cent of the country “under a direct Israeli military evacuation order”, the UNHCR official told reporters in Geneva.
Some 1.2 million people have now been displaced across Lebanon, according to the country’s government, while the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, warned that all those impacted “are enduring the worst humanitarian crisis in decades”.
Desperate scenes have also been reported on Lebanon’s border with Syria, where more than 283,000 people have now crossed into northern Syria “seeking safety, fleeing Israeli airstrikes”, the UN refugee agency stated.
About 70 per cent of those people are Syrians and roughly 30 per cent are Lebanese, according to UNHCR.
