Indiscriminate Israeli shelling caused most of the Lebanese civilian deaths in last year's war, Human Rights Watch said today.
The findings, in a new report by the New York-based group, challenged Israel's argument that Hizbullah militants were to blame for fighting within Lebanese towns and villages during the 34-day conflict in July and August 2006.
Citing five months of research in areas hit by Israeli air strikes and artillery, Human Rights Watch said it found no evidence of Hizbullah guerrillas systematically using civilians as "human shields".
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev
The group, which also condemned Hizbullah rocket attacks on Israel, faulted Israeli forces for attacking political and social wings of the Iranian-backed Shia movement.
"Hizbullah fighters often didn't carry their weapons in the open or regularly wear military uniforms, which made them a hard target to identify," Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said.
"But this doesn't justify the Israel Defence Forces' failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and if in doubt to treat a person as a civilian, as the laws of war require."
Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, including around 270 Hizbullah fighters, died in the war, which was triggered by a
Hizbullah border raid. Also killed were 158 Israelis, most of them military personnel.
Israel said its forces, which overran Hizbullah's strongholds, had acted lawfully.
"We conform with accepted norms in the conduct of military conflict, and we conformed with the accepted norms in the conduct of the rules of war," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry.
Mr Regev cited UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland, who told CNN on July 26th, 2006 that Hizbullah were unlawfully "shielding themselves close to UN posts and close to the civilian population". Mr Egeland also condemned Israel's tactics.
"Hizbullah had a clear pattern of behaviour where it embedded itself among the Lebanese civilian population and exploited it as human shields," Mr Regev said. This is not just the Israeli understanding."
Human Rights Watch said Hizbullah mostly operated away from civilians.