“Near-daily aerial bombardment, artillery shelling and the incendiary chemical white phosphorus have made much of the 5 kilometers north of the Blue Line uninhabitable,” the report claimed.
The Financial Times analyzed data from commercial satellites with research from the CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University to detect changes to buildings.
According to the report, only “handfuls” of Lebanese civilians remain in the area, with most buildings empty and many destroyed. The analysis identified 1,500 badly damaged structures, although this figure was considered a “conservative lower-bound estimate.” A Lebanese official, Hashem Haidar, told The Financial Times that 3,000 homes in the country’s south have been completely leveled, and 12,000 have incurred medium-level damage.
Haidar added that Israeli strikes have thoroughly damaged civilian infrastructure. “The type of weaponry that’s being used is different from what we saw in 2006,” he told The Financial Times. “Before, when a house was bombed, the damage would be confined to the house and its immediate surroundings. Now, there are entire neighborhoods that are being affected by one bombing.”
Haidar also said 12,000 square kilometers (7,456 square miles) of agricultural land have been destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces’s use of white phosphorus. The IDF denied the allegations, saying their use of the substance is consistent with international law and it is not used for incendiary purposes, but rather to create smokescreens. READ MORE
