ASIA – Israel has pummeled Lebanon with an unprecedented airstrike campaign in less than three weeks, killing over 1,400 people, injuring nearly 7,500 others and displacing more than one million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The bombardment, which Israel says is targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the country, marks the world’s “most intense aerial campaign” outside of Gaza in the last two decades, according to the conflict monitoring group Airwars.

Israel’s strikes are occurring at “a level and intensity that Israel’s own allies just simply would not have carried out in the last 20 years,” Emily Tripp, director of the UK-based group, told CNN. She pointed to the United States-led military campaign against ISIS in 2017, where, at the height of the battle for Raqqa – the terror group’s de facto capital – 500 munitions were deployed in a single day.

Over the course of two days, on September 24 and September 25, the Israel military said it used 2,000 munitions and carried out 3,000 strikes. In comparison, for most of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, the US carried out less than 3,000 strikes a year, barring the first year of the invasion, where around 6,500 strikes were carried out – according to data from Airwars analyzed by CNN.

“This isn’t normal,” Tripp said of both the scale and size of Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.  While Israel’s air campaign is extremely “unusual,” Tripp said its assault on Gaza over the last year – where nearly 60% of buildings are estimated to have been damaged from Israeli strikes – have normalized such mass assaults. Israel says it takes steps to minimize civilian harm, like making phone calls and sending text messages to residents in buildings designated for attack. Human rights groups like Amnesty International say such warnings do not absolve Israel of responsibilities under international humanitarian law to limit civilian harm.

CNN has previously reported on Israel’s devastating use of 2,000-pound bombs, which experts blame for the high death toll in Gaza and appear to have been deployed in the airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon. The massive munitions have impacted civilian infrastructure in Gaza and now Lebanon. (CNN)…[+]