LEBANON: UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland calls Israeli response to kidnapped soldiers "disporportionate"

Israeli military offensive and bombing of a crowded Beirut neighbourhood where Hizbollah had its headquarters is not not proportionate to the threat, a senior United Nations official said on Sunday (July 23). "What I see is a disproportionate response in my view, virtually whole blocks being levelled to the ground in southern Beirut. Mostly residential houses as I could see it. We were trampling on a school box when we went through rubble. But of course Hizbollah blending into the population and continuing to fire missiles to Israel - they have to stop it. These are violations of humanitarian law and the civilians should be shielded, civilians are protected people, they are not the targets," Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters as he toured the Rafik Hariri hospital where victims of Israeli air raids and shelling are treated. "We so far have only a very clear statement (from Israel) of a corridor to Beirut by sea and by air. What we need is a corridor to the people in the South, to the people in the mountains, to the people in the most affected places. And I'm hopeful we will get that very soon because I have no reason to disbelieve those Israeli leaders who say that they want us to help the civilian population. They don't want to prevent us from doing so," Egeland told journalists on a press conference after the visit when asked about any guarantees from Israel that UN convoys will be able to provide aid in Lebanon.

ITN Source | July 24, 2006

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