[WCUSP] Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war with Lebanon!

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

_http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/777549.html_ 
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/777549.html) 
 
 w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
 
 Last update - 06:42 22/10/2006
 Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon
 
 By Meron Rappaport, Haaretz Correspondent
 
 Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah  
 targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White  
 phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to  
 those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only  
 uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.
 
 The announcement that the Israel Defense Forces had used phosphorus  
 bombs in the war in Lebanon was made by Minister Jacob Edery, in  
 charge of government-Knesset relations. He had been queried on the  
 matter by MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz-Yahad).
 
 "The IDF holds phosphorus munitions in different forms," Edery said.  
 "The IDF made use of phosphorous shells during the war against  
 Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground."
 
 Edery also pointed out that international law does not forbid the use  
 of phosphorus and that "the IDF used this type of munitions according  
 to the rules of international law."
 
 Edery did not specify where and against what types of targets  
 phosphorus munitions were used. During the war several foreign media  
 outlets reported that Lebanese civilians carried injuries  
 characteristic of attacks with phosphorus, a substance that burns  
 when it comes to contact with air. In one CNN report, a casualty with  
 serious burns was seen lying in a South Lebanon hospital.
 
 In another case, Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal  
 hospital in Ba'albek, said that he had received three corpses  
 "entirely shriveled with black-green skin," a phenomenon  
 characteristic of phosphorus injuries.
 
 Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use  
 of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.
 
 Phosphorus has been used by armies since World War I. During World  
 War II and Vietnam the U.S. and British armies made extensive use of  
 phosphorus. During recent decades the tendency has been to ban the  
 use of phosphorus munitions against any target, civilian or military,  
 because of the severity of the injuries that the substance causes.
 
 Some experts believe that phosphorus munitions should be termed  
 Chemical Weapons (CW) because of the way the weapons burn and attack  
 the respiratory system. As a CW, phosphorus would become a clearly  
 illegal weapon.
 
 The International Red Cross is of the opinion that there should be a  
 complete ban on phosphorus being used against human beings and the  
 third protocol of the Geneva Convention on Conventional Weapons  
 restricts the use of "incendiary weapons," with phosphorus considered 
 to be one such weapon.
 
 Israel and the United States are not signatories to the Third Protocol.
 
 In November 2004 the U.S. Army used phosphorus munitions during an  
 offensive in Faluja, Iraq. Burned bodies of civilians hit by the  
 phosphorus munitions were shown by the press, and an international  
 outcry against the practice followed.
 
 Initially the U.S. denied that it had used phosphorus bombs against  
 humans, but then acknowledged that during the assault targets that  
 were neither civilian nor population concentrations were hit with  
 such munitions. Israel also says that the use of "incendiary  
 munitions are not in themselves illegal."
 
 
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