Soccer Dad

Hezbollah: still endangering civilians

A few weeks ago a Hezbollah arms stash exploded in southern Lebanon, leading to a "flying pigs" moment, that someone representing the UN acknowledged that Hezbollah was violating 1701:

There is an "actively maintained" weapons cache in southern Lebanon, a senior UN diplomat said Thursday.

During a briefing of the Security Council, the UN's head of peacekeeping Alain Le Roy indicated that weapons exposed after a July 14 explosion in southern Lebanon were being actively maintained, a violation of a UN-brokered resolution that ended hostilities between Lebanon and Israel in 2006.

This, of course, is a continuation of Hezbollah's tactic of hiding its military assets in civilian areas.

During the Second Lebanon War, the Hizbullah systematically and cynically exploited the local civilian population, maintaining its military network within densely populated areas. In addition, large quantities of rockets were fired from within these areas as well. This apparent lack of concern for the local population was reaffirmed in May 2008, when the Hizbullah turned its firepower onto the domestic arena in order to ensure that it would attain veto rights within the new government's policy statements.

This most recent incident has displayed once again Hizbullah's position towards the local population; hiding ammunition within populated areas not only sets the area as a legitimate target for a military strike but also exposes the non-combatants to the dangers of being in proximity to arms caches which are not necessarily stable. This behavior stands in direct contradiction with Hizbullah's attempts to portray itself as the "Protector of Lebanon".

Now an Italian newspaper is reporting that the crash of an Iranian airliner a few weeks ago was the result of Hezbollah bound armaments exploding. (h/t tweeted by Backspin):

The report is in line with testimonies on explosion sounds heard before the crash. According to the sources, the plane was meant to transfer the fuses from Iran to Armenia, and from there to Syria through Turkey, and then on the ground to Lebanon. This route was chosen, according to exiled opposition sources, so as not to draw attention.

According to the report, the transfer of arms was a special operation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and some of its members were among the crash victims. It was also reported that the presence of security forces at the site of the crash was not a coincidence.

Though supposedly the plane suffered from an "engine fire," the LAT reported:

"Its wheels were out, and there was fire coming from the lower parts," Abul-Fazel Idaji told Fars. "Moments later, the plane hit the ground and broke into pieces."

The lower parts of a plane, I believe, are the cargo holds, not the engines. The TU-154's engines are located at the rear and top of the fuselage. (You can see two of the three engines in this photo.)

Apparently, once again, Hezbollah's war against Israel endangered civilians.

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