An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in northern Lebanon that killed at least 22 people needs to be independently investigated, the United Nations' human rights office said Tuesday.
"We have real concerns with respect to - the laws of war," Jeremy Laurence, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s human rights office said a day after the strike, as rescue workers searching through the rubble found more bodies and remains. Laurence said the U.N. had received credible reports that a dozen women and children were among the dead.
The Israeli military said it 'struck a target belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization" and that it would look into reports of civilian deaths.
The apartment building hit in the airstrike was in the small village of Aito, in the country's Christian heartland and far from Hezbollah's main areas of influence in Lebanon's south and east. The strike was a shock to residents, and it exacerbated fears that Israel would expand its offensive deeper into Lebanon.
"I heard a loud noise, like a boom," said Dany Alwan, who lives next door. "We ran outside, I saw the dust and the smoke and the rubble. There was a body here, another one there. It was a really ugly and painful scene."
