Click to expand Image Reuters' journalist Issam Abdallah films an interview amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, April 17, 2022. © 2022 Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters (Beirut) – Lebanon’s announcement on October 9, 2025, that it has tasked the Justice Ministry with assessing the legal measures that may be taken following Israeli attacks on journalists during the last war offers a fresh opportunity to achieve justice for the victims, Human Rights Watch said today.Two years since Israel’s apparently deliberate attack on journalists in south Lebanon, which killed a Reuters journalist, Issam Abdallah, victims of war crimes in Lebanon remain without effective access to accountability and justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Lebanon’s new government, appointed in February 2025, has yet to take meaningful steps to advance accountability.“Israel’s apparently deliberate killing of Issam Abdullah should have served as a crystal clear message for Lebanon’s government that impunity for war crimes begets more war crimes,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Since Issam’s killing, scores of other civilians in Lebanon have been killed in apparently deliberate or indiscriminate attacks that violate the laws of war and amount to war crimes.”Since then, Israeli forces have, according to Reporters Without Borders, killed over 200 journalists in Gaza, many deliberately. Recently, Israeli forces also carried out a strike on a media center in Sanaa and killed 31 journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.In Lebanon, Human Rights Watch has documented a series of unlawful attacks and apparent war crimes committed by the Israeli military during hostilities, including additional apparently deliberate attacks on journalists, as well as peacekeepers, medics, and civilian objects. Israel’s deliberate demolition of civilian homes, destruction of vast swaths of critical civilian infrastructure and public services, and its use of explosive weapons in populated areas have made it impossible for many residents to return to their villages and houses.Human Rights Watch has also documented the Israeli military’s widespread use of white phosphorus, including unlawfully over populated residential areas, its apparent deliberate destruction and pillaging of schools, and unlawful use of booby trapped devices. Human Rights Watch also found that Hezbollah failed to take adequate precautions to protect civilians in its attacks on northern Israel between September and November 2024, launching explosive weapons in populated areas and failing to effectively warn civilians of attacks.Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli strikes that killed Abdallah and injured six other journalists from Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and AFP were apparently a deliberate attack on civilians and therefore a war crime. An investigation by the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) found that an Israeli tank fired two 120 mm rounds at a group of “clearly identifiable journalists,” including Abdallah, in violation of international law. The investigators said that UNIFIL personnel did not record any exchange of fire across the border between Israel and Lebanon for more than 40 minutes before the Israeli Merkava tank opened fire.The journalists were well removed from ongoing hostilities, clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes before they were hit by two consecutive strikes. Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target near the journalists’ location. Evidence Human Rights Watch reviewed further indicated that the Israeli military knew or should have known that the group of people they were firing on were civilians.In January and February 2025, the Israeli military withdrew from most of the southern Lebanese border villages and towns that it had occupied in late 2024, but its forces remained stationed on Lebanese territory in at least five locations. The hostilities resulted in nearly US$14 billion in economic losses in Lebanon, according to the World Bank, including $6.8 billion worth of damage to physical structures alone. Several border towns and villages were reduced to rubble, and more than 80,000 people remained displaced in Lebanon as of May 2025.Lebanon has not fully incorporated international crimes or laws of war violations into its domestic legal framework. Following his visit to Lebanon, on October 10, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, called on the Lebanese authorities to “report and, where appropriate, prosecute conduct that may amount to international crimes, in accordance with Lebanon’s obligations under international human rights law and, where applicable, international humanitarian law.”While a ceasefire went into effect between Israel and Hezbollah on November 27, 2024, at least 103 civilians in Lebanon have been killed in the ten months since the ceasefire went into effect, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.In March 2024, the then-Lebanese government announced a decision to grant the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction over crimes committed on Lebanese territory since October 7, 2023, but the government reversed the decision just over a month later. Lebanon’s judicial authorities should initiate domestic investigations into unlawful attacks, and the government should accede to the ICC’s Rome Statute and submit a declaration accepting the court’s jurisdiction prior to the date of accession, including since at least October 7, 2023, Human Rights Watch said.“Lebanon’s government can and should honor victims’ demands for justice by enabling the investigation of unlawful attacks and war crimes that caused untold damage and suffering,” Kaiss said.