A/HRC/3/2
page 34
120. During one single bombing, 35 people were killed. Twenty-four hours before the end of
the conflict, one building was bombed and six families within it were hit when they came back to
clean their apartments. The total figures of those killed or injured were, however, comparatively
low in relation to the utter destruction of the area, because after the second day of the conflict a
large portion of the population had vacated the area. The total of those killed is estimated at
around 110 with another 300 people injured.
121. In Chiyah, according to witness reports, on 7 August one building was hit twice
within 10 seconds, first by four bombs and second by two bombs. The Commission was given a
list of the names of 41 individuals who were killed in this incident, including 13 children,
one newborn, and 17 women. Many of those killed were internally displaced persons (IDPs)
who had fled from the South.
122. In Roueiss, the Commission received information about the bombing of 8 eight-storey
buildings which were attacked on the afternoon of 13 August, a few hours before the ceasefire.
Only two people survived this strike. The bodies of 13 people disintegrated completely. The
death toll is now 43 civilians. Witnesses described how the buildings collapsed in less than one
minute. One man was trapped in the rubble, the stairs having fallen on him. He stayed there for
three days, screaming as he heard the bulldozers removing the rubble around him. In the centre
of these buildings was a yard where children were playing at the time of the bombing.
(c)
Bekaa Valley
123. In Al Qa’a, in the Bekaa Valley, the Commission saw the wreckage of a metal-roofed
building used by Syrian workers employed on a farm to gather peaches during the harvest
season. The building housed workers’ quarters composed of 12 rooms and a central corridor.
According to one witness, the building was bombed on 4 August at 1400 hours in two strikes.92
At the time of the bombing, most of the workers were having their lunch in the building. The
witness told the Commission that there was an MK drone over that location prior to the bombing
and that two hours before the air strike, a truck had come to load fruit. The truck was open and it
was possible to see from the air what was inside. One farmer was killed outside on a tractor and
another was injured while collecting water from a tank located a few meters away from the
building. Figures regarding the total death toll from this incident vary from 25 to 39.93
124. A separate attack destroyed the house of a local farmer a few hundred metres away;
however nobody was hurt as the family had left that house before that day and the farmer was
outside at the time of the bombing.
125. From the close location of the two buildings, the farming activities carried out in the open
and the circumstances of the attacks as described by the farmer, it would appear to the
Commission that these strikes were deliberately targeted. The Israeli authorities said they
targeted the buildings suspecting they were being used as storage points for weaponry, having
followed from the Syrian border to that farm a large truck they suspected of transporting arms.94
The Commission considers that the presence of a drone above these locations should have
allowed IDF to identify the nature of agricultural activities taking place and the presence of a
large number of farm workers and their families. Even if the truck had been carrying arms, and
the farm had a dual use, nothing explains why the strikes took place at a time when all workers
and their families were present in the building.
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents