Amnesty International accused both Israel and Lebanon's Hizbullah on Wednesday of committing war crimes during the war last summer, saying both were guilty of indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas.
In its annual global human rights report, released Wednesday, the organization said Israeli troops and Hizbullah "committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes."
"In particular, Israeli forces carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on a large scale," the report read. "Israeli forces also appear to have carried out direct attacks on civilian infrastructure intended to inflict a form of collective punishment on Lebanon's people, in order to induce them and the Lebanese government to turn against Hizbullah, as well as to cause harm to Hizbullah's military capability."
"Hizbullah's rocket attacks on northern Israel amounted to deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as indiscriminate attacks," said the report. "Its attacks also violated other rules of international humanitarian law, including the prohibition on reprisal attacks on the civilian population."
Amnesty also slammed Israel for launching "hundreds of thousands" of cluster bombs, which it said contained up to 4 million bomblets, into southern Lebanon during the final days of the war, after the terms of a cease-fire had already been agreed. "The million or so unexploded bomblets that were left continued to kill and maim civilians long after the end of the war," said the report. "Some 200 people, including tens of children, had been killed or injured by these bomblets and newly laid mines by the end of the year."
The group said at least 20 people were killed by the cluster bomblets after the conflict had already come to an end.
