Beirut: Lebanon accused Israel on Tuesday of using white phosphorus assaults, for which it claimed it would file a complaint with the UN, with a minister claiming the incendiary weapon had burned 40,000 olive trees.
The weapon can cause significant burns if it hits a person. Rights groups and Lebanese officials have repeatedly accused Israel of using it; Israel has previously refuted these accusations.
“I instructed the Lebanese mission to the UN to submit a new complaint to the Security Council to condemn Israel’s use of white phosphorus in repeated attacks on Lebanon,” Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said.
Bou Habib, in a statement, also accused Israel of “deliberately burning Lebanese groves and forests.”
There have been tit-for-tat confrontations between Israel and Hamas's allies, Iran-backed Hezbollah, on Lebanon's southern border ever since the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented offensive on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, AFP reported.
An AFP count shows that at least 62 people have died as a result of the conflicts in Lebanon, largely Hezbollah fighters but also four civilians, one of them was a Reuters journalist.
According to Israel, eight people—both troops and civilians—were killed.
In the border region, Israeli attacks have also ignited olive orchards and other vegetation. As of Tuesday, at least one fire was still burning in the southern part of Lebanon.
40,000 olive trees in southern Lebanon were destroyed by Israeli white phosphorous strikes, according to Agriculture Minister Abbas Al Hajj Hassan.
In a preliminary survey, his ministry found that “128 fires resulted from the Israeli enemy’s phosphorus bombing of our regions,” he said.
The chemical phosphorus, which ignites when it comes into contact with air, is used to make smokescreens to conceal unit movements, light up the battlefield, or set buildings on fire.
It is covered by the 1983 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which limits the use of incendiary weapons without outright banning them.
The convention forbids their use against civilians and non-military targets and the use of them against military targets in close proximity to civilians. However, it makes no mention of their usage for battlefield illumination or smokescreening.
Amnesty International published an investigation earlier on Tuesday, claiming to have "evidence of Israel's unlawful use of white phosphorus" in south Lebanon from October 10 to October 16.
“One attack on the town of Dhayra on 16 October must be investigated as a war crime because it was an indiscriminate attack that injured at least nine civilians... and was therefore unlawful,” the group added.
Additionally, Human Rights Watch accused Israel earlier this month of using white phosphorus in Gaza and Lebanon; Israel refuted the accusations.