Lebanese ambulance crews have been prevented from entering Lebanese towns and villages hit by Israeli strikes, compounding the suffering of civilians on the ground as Israel persists with a deadly new wave of attacks. At least eleven people were killed on Thursday, including a family of four in the town of Adloun near Sidon.
On Tuesday, an Israeli strike hit the south Lebanese town of Maarakeh near Tyre , killing eight people. In total at least 31 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on that day.Under the terms of a ceasefire deal reached in November 2024 to end that year’s Israeli war on Lebanon, a body known officially as the Military Technical Committee for Lebanon, but commonly referred to as the “Mechanism”, was set up to oversee the truce.
It is chaired by the United States and includes representatives from the Lebanese Army, Israel, France, and UNIFIL - the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
While the Mechanism is tasked with monitoring the ceasefire, amid the current war it has been accused of exceeding its authority and effectively stopping rescue operations.
On the social media platform X , Cilina Nasser, a human rights expert and former UN investigator, said that the Mechanism had told rescue teams to stop their efforts to find missing people following the deadly strike on Maarakeh. “The role of the Mechanism is to monitor and facilitate the implementation of the cessation of hostilities. What we are seeing, however, is a deviation from that mandate, with the Mechanism now relaying the position of one of its members, Israel, which is denying or limiting rescue workers and ambulances from doing their jobs,” Nasser later told The New Arab .
She said that the Mechanism had been reduced to “relaying messages on behalf of Israel,” which meant that it was “disregarding a core principle of international humanitarian law - which is the right to unhindered access for life-saving interventions in conflict-affected areas”.
“Given that Israel does not respect the protection of rescue workers and ambulances, those coordinate with UNIFIL and the Lebanese army when they want to reach targeted areas for life-saving interventions,” Nasser explained. Israel can ‘veto’ rescues of Lebanon civilians Nasser said that because Israel was part of the Mechanism, it had effectively been given veto power over rescue operations in south Lebanon.
“UNIFIL informs the Mechanism members, and Israel does not give the okay for access or gives a delayed approval or gives the approval and then orders (through the Mechanism) the rescue workers and ambulances to stop searching for people under the rubble and leave,” Nasser told The New Arab . “No authority has the right to stop life-saving interventions - this is protected under international humanitarian law.” The New Arab reached out to a UNIFIL spokesperson but they said that they were unable to comment on the issue.
According to Nasser, this was not the first time Israel had prevented life saving interventions by rescuers through the Mechanism. Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed on 22 April by an Israeli strike after she took shelter in a building following a previous strike on a car she was following. The Red Cross managed to rescue her wounded fellow-journalist Zeinab Faraj and retrieve the bodies of two civilians who had been killed by Israel.
However, they were forced to leave the area without evacuating Khalil - who later died. Nasser said that they were ordered to leave by the Mechanism.
In a later incident, last Sunday, Israel struck the town of Doueir near Nabatiyeh in south Lebanon killing at least three people.
Nasser said that a woman identified as Suzanne Hoteit had been missing in the village since then, as rescuers were refused permission to search for her. It is not known whether she is dead and alive.
“For four days she has remained in the open; her body still clings to the land of the South, which continues to embrace her," Hoteit’s niece Souad wrote on Facebook . "And to this day, we are still anxiously waiting for ‘permission’ to search for her, hoping we can at least soothe our hearts. Especially since her only daughter, Lilian, does not know what happened to her mother - she believes she is in intensive care."
Israel has regularly attacked paramedics and rescuers throughout the current war, which began in Lebanon on March 2, after Iran-backed Hezbollah targeted Israel following the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although a ceasefire has technically been in place since April 16, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently ordered the Israeli military to intensify its strikes on Lebanon.
At least 3,269 people have been killed since the current war began, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, while hundreds of thousands more have been displaced from their towns and villages.