Tag: war crime

  • Human Rights Watch confirms use of white phosphorus in Gaza, Lebanon

    Human Rights Watch confirms use of white phosphorus in Gaza, Lebanon

    As Israel’s onslaught on Gaza enters the seventh day, multiple sources claimed that Israeli forces were using white phosphorus to attack Gaza and Lebanon.

    The Palestinians claimed the news to be true but many news platforms did not verify the reports.

    The use of white phosphorus has now been confirmed by Human Rights Watch.

    “Human Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10 and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza,” they have stated.

    Additionally, Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch explains that “Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,

    “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.”

    The United Nations has banned the use of incendiary weapons in 1972.

    “Incendiary weapons are weapons or munitions designed to set fire to objects or cause burn or respiratory injury to people through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, resulting from a chemical reaction of a flammable substance such as napalm or white phosphorus,” the UN says.

    Nonetheless, it is not the first time that Israel has used white phosphorus against Palestinians. One of the first recorded incidents of its use is from 2009.

  • Australian special forces killed Afghan prisoner to make room on plane: US marine

    Australian special forces killed Afghan prisoner to make room on plane: US marine

    A United States Marine Corps (USMC) helicopter crew chief accused Australian special forces of killing a hog-tied Afghan prisoner after being told he would not fit on the US aircraft coming to pick them up.

    The marine told ABC Investigations he was a door gunner providing aerial covering fire for the Australian soldiers of the 2nd Commando Regiment during a night raid in mid-2012. The operation took place north of the HMLA-469 base at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

    It was part of a wider joint Australian special forces-US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) campaign targeting illicit drug operations that were financing the Taliban insurgency. “We had done the drug raid, the Aussies actually did a pretty impressive job, wrangling all the prisoners up,” Josh said.

    “We just watched them tackle and hogtie these guys and we knew their hands were tied behind their backs.”

    He says the commandos then called up the US aircraft to pick them and about seven prisoners up. He says the Americans only had room on the aircraft for six. “And the pilot said, ‘That’s too many people, we can’t carry that many passengers.’ And you just heard this silence and then we heard a pop. And then they said, ‘OK, we have six prisoners’.

    “So it was pretty apparent to everybody involved in that mission that they had just killed a prisoner that we had just watched them catch and hogtie,” he said.

    Josh says neither he nor any of his crew spoke about what had just happened.

    “We were all being recorded on our comms,” he said.

    “All of us were pretty aware of what we just witnessed, and kind of didn’t want to be involved in whatever came next.”

    Josh says he later discussed the incident with his crewmates after returning to Camp Bastion.

    “This was the first time we saw something we couldn’t morally justify, because we knew somebody was already cuffed up, ready to go, taken prisoner and we just witnessed them kill a prisoner,” he said.

    “This isn’t like a heat of the moment call where you’re trying to make a decision. It was a very deliberate decision to break the rules of war.

    “I think that was the first thing that happened that didn’t quite sit right with us, where we were like, ‘OK, there’s no excuse, there’s no ambiguity, there’s no going around this one’.”