Context
On September 19, 1994, the village came under attack and was hit with Israeli flechette-filled shells that killed 4 civilians, and wounded another four.
The attack was one of several incidents in mid April 1996 which occurred shortly after Israel announced the execution of Operation Grapes of Wrath on the 11th of that month. In these instances, Israeli helicopter missiles killed Lebanese civilians. On the 13th, an Israeli Apache helicopter, after hovering for several minutes over the Shiite village of Mansouri 8 kilometres from the Israeli border, fired a missile at an ambulance as it was passing a UN checkpoint. The vehicle was carrying 13 people, aware of Israeli requests that villages in the south evacuate their residents, who were fleeing. 4 children and two women were incinerated. It later stated that the village ambulance, [lower-alpha 1] either was a vehicle owned by a member of Hezbollah or was hiding one of its guerillas, a claim denied by Robert Fisk who interviewed eyewitnesses on the site soon afterwards. [lower-alpha 2] Hezbollah retaliated the following day by firing 81 Katyusha rockets into Israel, 28% of the total it launched during the Israeli operation.
On the 18th of April, Israeli artillery opened fire on the Shiite and Catholic Melkite village of Qana, killing 106 people in what became known as the Qana massacre. In other incidents that week, an Israeli helicopter pilot fired a missile at a car near the Jieh power station driven by a young woman who had just stopped to buy a sandwich. In West Beirut a two-year-old girl was decapitated by another missile.
Attack
The village of Nabatieh Fawka, 20 miles north of Qana, is located on a stretch of hills 3 km north of the Nabatieh city. The Al Abed had family moved there since it seemed a relatively safer location, out of the way of the IDF and the South Lebanon Army. The father, Hassan, was absent at the time, since he had departed to perform the Hajj in Mecca. [14]
Around 5 AM, IDF helicopters were flying over the area. At 6:30, they fired rockets at the two-story house where the family was sleeping, completely demolishing it. They also hit two other buildings, causing severe damage. Initial reports from the Lebanese Army stated that 11 civilians had been killed, including a four-day-old infant.
Aftermath
Shortly after the attack, the IDF released a statement claiming that it was a "response to a Hezbollah attack in the security zone". Investigations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Hezbollah was hiding in the building.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres blamed the civilians for staying in Nabatieh, saying that they should have left earlier.
The IDF attack on the UNIFIL compound in Qana, leaving 106 civilians dead, took place later on the same day.
Operation Grapes of Wrath concluded shortly after this last attack. In 16 days, Israel carried out 600 air strikes and fired some 25,000 shells into Southern Lebanon, resulting in the death of 154 civilians and a further 351 injured.
The incident has been cited in a recent study of media bias in reporting conflicts in the Middle East.
The Qana massacre took place on April 18, 1996, near Qana, a village in then Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon, when the Israeli military fired artillery shells at a United Nations compound, which was sheltering around 800 Lebanese civilians, killing 106 and injuring around 116. Four Fijian United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon soldiers were also seriously injured.
Operation Grapes of Wrath, known in Lebanon as the April Aggression, was a seventeen-day campaign of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against Hezbollah in 1996 which attempted to end the Iran-backed group's rocket attacks on northern Israeli civilian centres by forcing the group north of the Litani River, out of easy range of these civilian centres. Prior to the operation, Hezbollah had launched 151 rockets from Lebanon into Israel, killing two Israeli civilians and seriously wounding 24 other Israeli civilians.
On July 25, 1993, Israeli forces launched a week-long attack against Lebanon named Operation Accountability in Israel and the Seven-Day War in Lebanon. Israel specified three purposes to the operation, to strike directly at Hezbollah, to make it difficult for Hezbollah to use southern Lebanon as a base for striking Israel, and to displace Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in the hopes of pressuring the Lebanese government to intervene against Hezbollah. The affected civilian population included both Lebanese and Palestinian people.
This is a timeline of events related to the 2006 Lebanon War.
The Israeli–Lebanese conflict, or the South Lebanon conflict, is a long-running conflict involving Israel, Lebanon-based paramilitary groups, and sometimes Syria. The conflict peaked during the Lebanese Civil War. In response to Palestinian attacks from Lebanon, Israel invaded the country in 1978 and again in 1982. After this it occupied southern Lebanon until 2000, while fighting a guerrilla conflict against Shia paramilitaries. After Israel's withdrawal, Hezbollah attacks sparked the 2006 Lebanon War. A new period of conflict began in 2023, leading to the 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The South Lebanon conflict was an armed conflict that took place in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 or 1985 until Israel's withdrawal in 2000. Hezbollah, along with other Shia Muslim and left-wing guerrillas, fought against Israel and its ally, the Catholic Christian-dominated South Lebanon Army (SLA). The SLA was supported militarily and logistically by the Israel Defense Forces and operated under the jurisdiction of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon provisional administration, which succeeded the earlier Israeli-backed Free Lebanon State. Israel officially names the conflict the Security Zone in Lebanon Campaign and deems it to have begun on 30 September 1982, after the end of its "Operation Peace for Galilee". It can also be seen as an extension of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990).
During the 2006 July War, a number of international incidents occurred in Lebanon, largely involving United Nations personnel who have come under a number of attacks by Israeli forces.
The 2006 Qana airstrike was an airstrike carried out by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) on a three-story building in the small community of al-Khuraybah near the South Lebanese village of Qana on July 30, 2006, during the 2006 Lebanon War. The strike killed 28 civilians, 16 of whom were children. Israel halted airstrikes for 48 hours following the attack, amid increasing calls for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.
The 2006 Lebanon War, also called the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War and known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, was a 34-day armed conflict in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. Due to unprecedented Iranian military support to Hezbollah before and during the war, some consider it the first round of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, rather than a continuation of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Hezbollah has a military branch and is the sponsor of a number of lesser-known groups, some of which may be little more than fronts for Hezbollah itself. These groups include the Organization of the Oppressed, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, the Organization of Right Against Wrong, and Followers of the Prophet Muhammad.
The 2000–2006 Shebaa Farms conflict was a low-level border conflict between Israel and Hezbollah for control of Shebaa Farms, a disputed territory located on the Golan Heights–Lebanon border. Fighting between the two sides primarily consisted of Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and Israeli artillery barrages and airstrikes on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Clashes began a few months after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Hezbollah viewed as incomplete due to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces in Shebaa Farms. The conflict culminated in the 2006 Lebanon War; Israel retains control over the territory.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials accused both Hezbollah and Israel of violating international humanitarian law. These have included allegations of intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, and the use of prohibited weapons.
Force Mobile Reserve (FMR) was a multi-national, mechanized, high-readiness military reserve force, established in 1987, and able to react to incidents anywhere in the United Nations Interim Force in the Lebanon (UNIFIL) area of operations.
Events in the year 1996 in Israel.
The Mansouri attack occurred on 13 April 1996, when an Israel Defence Forces helicopter attacked an ambulance in Mansouri, a village in Southern Lebanon, killing two women and four children.
Exchange of strikes between Israel and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have been occurring along the Israel–Lebanon border and in Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights since 8 October 2023. It is part of the spillover of the Israel–Hamas war and is the largest escalation of the Hezbollah–Israel conflict since the 2006 Lebanon War.
This timeline of the Israel–Hezbollah conflict covers the period from 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah launched rocket strikes on Israel in response to the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel, until the beginning of the first ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which lasted from 24 November 2023 to 30 November 2023.
This timeline of the Israel–Hezbollah conflict covers the period from 27 July 2024, when a Hezbollah rocket struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, killing 12 children, to 16 September 2024, one day before the explosion of Hezbollah pagers and walkie talkies.
