Lebanon complains to UN over latest deadly Israel strike on journalists

BEIRUT — Lebanon said on Monday it had submitted a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli strike last week that killed three journalists in the country's south.

The strike early Friday hit a complex in the Druze-majority town of Hasbaya in south Lebanon where more than a dozen journalists from Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.

The Israeli army said on Friday that the strike was "under review", maintaining it had targeted Hizbollah  fighters.

Lebanon submitted "a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon, and the Ouzai area" in Beirut's southern suburbs, a statement from the foreign ministry said on social media platform X.

"The repeated Israeli targeting of media crews is a war crime" and Israel must be "held to account and punished", the statement added.

Cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al Mayadeen, and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hizbollah's Al Manar television, were killed in the strike on the complex in Hasbaya, relatively far from the Israel-Hizbollah  war's main flashpoints.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack was deliberate and both he and Information Minister Ziad Makary labelled it a war crime.

Days earlier, Al Mayadeen said an Israeli strike hit an office the broadcaster had vacated near Ouzai in south Beirut.

Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon last month and later launched ground incursions following a year of cross-border clashes with the Iran-backed Hizbollah  group over the Gaza war.

In October last year, Reuters Journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP's Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.

Last November, Israeli bombardment killed Al Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.

Lebanese  rights groups said five more journalists and photographers working for local media had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country's south and Beirut's southern suburbs.