GENEVA: The UN rights chief said Tuesday he was “appalled” by a deadly Israeli strike nearly a south Beirut hospital Monday, demanding a “prompt and thorough investigation.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said Tuesday that at least 18 people had been killed in the Israeli strike near the Rafic Hariri Hospital, Lebanon’s biggest public health facility, located a few kilometers from the city center.
“I am appalled,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement, insisting that “the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law concerning the protection of civilians must be respected.”
He pointed out that four children reportedly figured among the at least 18 people killed, while 60 people had been wounded.
Rescuers were on Tuesday still searching for survivors, amid fears that the toll may rise further.
The facility in the densely-populated Jnah neighborhood sustained minor damage in the strike, with windows shattered and its solar panels destroyed, its director said.
In the vicinity, four buildings were flattened by the strikes, said an AFP correspondent in the area.
Turk stressed that “in the conduct of military operations, all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”
“Hospitals, ambulances and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law because of their lifesaving function for the wounded and the sick,” he said.
“When conducting military operations in the vicinity of hospitals, parties to the conflict must assess the expected impact on health care services in relation to the principles of proportionality and precautions.”
The UN rights chief insisted that “any incidents which affect hospitals must be subjected to a prompt and thorough investigation.”
“I repeat the UN’s call for an immediate cessation to hostilities, and remind all parties that the protection of civilians must be the absolute top priority.”
After nearly a year of war in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon, vowing to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the cross-border fire to return to their homes.
Israel ramped up its air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around the country and on September 30 sent in ground troops, in a war that has killed at least 1,550 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

BEIRUT: Lebanon will need $250 million a month to help more than a million people displaced by Israeli attacks, its minister in charge of responding to the crisis said on Tuesday, ahead of a conference on Thursday in Paris to rally support for Lebanon.
Nasser Yassin told Reuters the government response, helped by local initiatives and international aid, only covered 20 percent of the needs of some 1.3 million people uprooted from their homes and sheltering in public buildings or with relatives.
Those needs are likely to grow, as daily waves of airstrikes push more people out of their homes and leave Lebanon’s government scrambling to find ways to house them, Yassin said.
“We need $250 million a month” to cover basic food, water, sanitation and education services for the displaced, he said.
Schools, an old slaughterhouse, a fresh food market, an empty complex — all of them have been turned into collective shelters in recent days. “We’re transforming anything, any public building,” Yassin said. “There is a lot to be done.”
Yassin — whose official mandate as environment minister meant he was working on preventing forest fires before the current conflict broke out a year ago — now spends much of his time at government headquarters with a crisis team, including other Lebanese ministries, the United Nations Development Programme and the Lebanese Red Cross.
They are planning for relief operations on a timeline of four to six months — but Yassin hopes the spreading war will end sooner.
“We need to have a ceasefire today, and we need everybody in the international community, for once...to be brave enough to say what’s happening,” he told Reuters, a message he said he would stress in Paris.
“There is a member state of the UN waging war against a small nation in the most aggressive manner we’ve ever seen in the history of Lebanon. This should be the message,” he said.
Yassin said he estimated the damage to Lebanon to be in the billions of dollars.
“Full villages on the border were blown up in the last few days, but also public institutions...water establishments, pumping stations, hospitals, you name it. All of these need to be rebuilt.”
Lebanese authorities have yet to put a firm estimate on the scale of destruction across Lebanon and how much money it will take to rebuild. Nasser Saidi, a former economy minister, told Reuters last week that Israel’s bombing campaign has caused damage that will cost $25 billion to repair.
UNDP’s regional representative Blerta Aliko said on Tuesday the damage would be far-reaching and include “a drastic capital loss” — including to Lebanon’s ability to feed itself long-term.
“I’m not talking from the perspective of what is required in an immediate term, in the next month — I’m talking about the impact that has on the harvesting season ... being impacted in the south, being impacted in the east, which are very, very important for the country,” she said.