Children killed in Lebanon as Israeli strikes hit homes far from the war's front lines

Jawad Younes, 11, and his cousins were playing association football in the lot betwixt their houses, as they often did. His small comrade, four-year-old Mehdi, had united them but grew tired, so Jawad took him home and handed him off to their mother before returning to the game. Minutes later, an Israeli strike came.

The target was Jawad's uncle's home. The blast shook neighbouring buildings and threw Jawad's siblings at home to the ground. As their mother, Malak Meslmani, scrambled to help them up, she could think only of Jawad.

"I was pulling my children off the floor in the house, but as I was running to pick them up, I screamed, ‘Jawad,'" she said. "My heart told me."

Her son was instantly killed in the March 27 Israeli strike in Saksakieh, which also killed his cousin and wounded several other children.

Jawad's uncle also was killed. Meslmani called him a civilian. But like many Shia families in southern Lebanon, the family were loyal supporters of the militant group and political party Hezbollah, which formed in the 1980s to fight Israel's occupation of the area.

Jawad and his cousin are among 168 children killed — of more than 2,100 people in all — by Israel's strikes in the six weeks of renewed war between the country and Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.

Israel has often struck alleged Hezbollah militants or officials in their homes without warning, frequently in areas far from the front line when they are with their families, in apartment buildings surrounded by uninvolved neighbours. The Israeli military rarely names the targets of its strikes but says it takes measures to minimize civilian casualties — including children — and blames Hezbollah members for mixing with the general population. The families of children killed accuse Israel of committing war crimes because of the large number of civilian casualties.

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At least two Israeli civilians — both adults — and 13 soldiers have been killed in the current war with Hezbollah, according to figures from Israel. One of the civilians was killed by mistaken Israeli fire.

The Israeli military didn't deny that children have been killed in its Lebanon strikes but said it has targeted Hezbollah facilities and militants. The army says it's killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives but has provided little evidence.

Under international law governing armed conflict, it's never legal to directly target civilians, but collateral damage — harm to civilians when striking a military target — is allowed if it is proportional to the anticipated military gains of any given strike.

The Israeli military told The Associated Press in a statement that its strikes follow the law, including "the principles of distinction, proportionality, and the taking of precautions."

Charles Trumbull, an assistant University of South Carolina law professor who studies the law and ethics of armed conflict, said it's difficult to assess whether the proportionality threshold was met without knowing the strike targets and whether the military knew children were present.

"To the extent that they knew that children were likely to be harmed or killed in these strikes, and as an ethical matter, absolutely I think that should affect the calculus," he said.

Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, who's worked extensively in Gaza and Lebanon and runs an initiative treating some of the most seriously war-wounded children at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre, said most of the cases he has seen are "children being crushed underneath the rubble of their own homes."

Ten-year-old Zeinab al-Jabali used to tag along wherever her father went: the corner store, the mountains around their village in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Now the father, Hassan al-Jabali, sleeps in the Beirut hospital where doctors are treating his wife and three older daughters, all wounded in a strike that killed Zeinab.

War has shadowed most of al-Jabali's life. In 1982, his brother — then 10, like Zeinab — was killed by an Israeli missile.

On March 5, al-Jabali's wife and daughters were preparing for iftar, the meal ending the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, at his wife's sister's house when the airstrike hit it.

Al-Jabali acknowledged his brother-in-law — who was killed — "in the past was with the resistance," referring to Hezbollah.

"But they struck him at home, in a house full of children, full of girls," said al-Jabali, who heard the blast from elsewhere in the village and found a scene of carnage when he rushed to check on his family.

He said his wife still doesn't know Zeinab is dead; He's afraid the grief would endanger her recovery.

In response to questions about the strikes that killed Jawad and Zeinab, the Israeli military didn't give details about the intended targets.

Many Lebanese have blamed Hezbollah for pulling their country into the war when it fired missiles across the border March 2, two days after the U.S. And Israel attacked Iran. But for others, the devastation from Israeli strikes has strengthened their support.

"We are now holding onto the resistance more than any time before," said Meslmani, Jawad's mother.

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