Human Rights Watch had no evidence of a deliberate attack on civilian targets in the Gaza Strip after the September 14, 2001, Israel strike on a journalist
Human Rights Watch said that the strike that killed a videographer and injured six others in southern Lebanon appeared to be a deliberate attack by the Israeli military.
The watchdog group said that evidence it had reviewed — including dozens of videos of the incident, photographs and satellite images, and interviews with witnesses and military experts — showed that the journalists were not near areas where fighting was taking place and that there was no military objective near their position.
The report said that Mr. Abdallah was killed by a tank round from Israel. It claimed that the second strike was from a small guided missile.
Reuters said an Israeli helicopter had hovered overhead before the first strike. At least one of the press vehicles had tape spelling out “TV” on the roof. The reports released Thursday found no evidence of military targets near the journalists. Reuters said evidence of Israeli tank round shrapnel was found embedded in a vehicle and in body armor.
The report stated that two bullets fired within 37 seconds killed Mr. Abdallah and injured six others. A car belonging to Al Jazeera was destroyed.
It said they would have been visible to Israeli forces on the other side of the border, as well as to an Israeli military helicopter and likely an Israeli drone that were flying overhead around the time of the attack.
The terrorist attack on the slain journalist Abdallah: “You didn’t kill them,” said Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
At a news conference in Beirut to publicize the findings, Mr. Abdallah’s mother, Fatemah Qanso Abdallah, said that the report had given her some relief, though she questioned whether it would result in accountability.
The military said after the attack it’s looking into it. There is no findings yet. Israeli military officials have said in the past that they don’t target journalists.
“The Israeli military knew or should have known that they were civilians yet attacked them anyway in two separate strikes 37 seconds apart,” Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday. A separate report released by Human Rights Watch echoed the findings by Amnesty, Reuters and AFP.
Assi, who could be heard in a video screaming after the attack, had her leg severed and is still in the hospital.
Human rights officials said that the multiple sources of video and other images made it possible to carry out a detailed analysis. That is not the case with most of the other attacks, either in Lebanon or in Gaza.