Beirut, Lebanon – On Monday, Israel killed 10 firefighters in a strike on the southern Lebanese town of Baraachit, near Bint Jbeil, in what rescue workers have described as a deliberate attack.
The killings pushed the number of rescue workers Israel has killed in Lebanon to more than 100 in the past year – most of them in the past two weeks.
“It’s a tragedy that shocked me,” said a Lebanese Civil Defense member from nearby Tebnine, who asked Al Jazeera to withhold his name for fear of reprisals.
“I knew them, they were all my friends,” he said, adding that while they were not from the same organisation, there was coordination between them.
Directly targeting rescue workers or medical staff is against international humanitarian law and could amount to a war crime under the Geneva Conventions which Israel has ratified along with 195 other countries.
Since last October, at least 107 …