Lebanon’s government on Tuesday instructed its UN mission to file a protest against Israel, which it accused of using white phosphorus munitions on its targets to start fires in the southern part of the country, according to Lebanese diplomacy.

Firefights on the Israel/Lebanon border have been daily between the Israeli army and fighters from the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah since the Israel/Hamas war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7.

Chahal, the Israeli military, responded to the targeting of its positions by shelling the outskirts of border towns and positions of Hezbollah fighters. The Israeli fire caused fires that charred vast areas of vegetation and olive groves.

“I instructed the Lebanese mission to the UN to submit a new protest to the Security Council to condemn Israel’s use of white phosphorus in its repeated attacks against Lebanon and the deliberate burning of forests,” said Abdullah Bou Habib, the Lebanese minister, on Tuesday. of Foreign Affairs, according to a press release of his services.

At least 62 people have been killed on Lebanese soil, according to an AFP tally, including at least four civilians.

Since the escalation began, Lebanese officials and NGOs, joined yesterday by Amnesty International, have accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions.

“Thanks to a preliminary investigation carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture (…) we identified 128 fires as a result of the Israeli enemy’s white phosphorus bombings,” Agriculture Minister Abbas Haj Hassan told AFP.

The Israeli bombardments “burned to the ground at least 40,000 olive trees, in addition to vast forest areas,” he added, condemning Lebanon’s flagrant “violation of national sovereignty.”

White phosphorus munitions, by definition incendiary weapons, are prohibited under international law from being used against civilians or civilian targets, but not against military targets, under the Third Protocol to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

According to ANI, Lebanon’s official news agency, at least one fire remained unextinguished yesterday.

Earlier on Tuesday, Amnesty International said it had “evidence of Israel’s illegal use of white phosphorus shells” in southern Lebanon between October 10 and 16.

One of these attacks should be “the subject of a war crime investigation” as it was an attack that was carried out “indiscriminately”, blindly, and “injured at least nine civilians” in the village of Daira, the NGO claimed in a statement.

In mid-October, Human Rights Watch (HRW) also accused Israel’s armed forces of using white phosphorus munitions in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon on October 11 and 12.

“We deny these accusations,” a spokesman for the Israeli army said at the time.