Live updates: Israeli military seizes the Gaza side of the Rafah border

BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that a March 27 Israeli strike on a paramedic center in south Lebanon that killed seven emergency service workers “was an unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions.”

It added that US-supplied arms were used in the strike in the village of Hebbariye that was carried out using a US-made joint direct attack munition guidance kit and an Israeli-made 500-pound (about 230 kilograms) general purpose bomb.

The rights group called for Washington to stop providing arms to Israel “given evidence that the Israeli military is using US weapons unlawfully.”

Israel at the time of the strike said it had hit a “military compound” and killed a “significant terrorist operative” from the Jamaa Islamiya, or Islamic Group, a Lebanese Sunni political group with an armed wing that has sometimes joined forces with the Shiite Hezbollah militant group as it has clashes with Israeli forces on the border over the past seven months.

Human Rights Watch said it found “no evidence of a military target” at the Lebanese Succour Association-run paramedic center that was struck, and that Islamic Group officials and family members of the seven people killed said they were civilians.

The Islamic Group said that while some of its supporters volunteered as paramedics with the association, “they do not include any fighters from its armed wing.” The report noted that under international law, warring parties “have a duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians” and “in case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person must be considered a civilian.”

Israeli strikes have killed more than 370 people in Lebanon over the past seven months, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including more than 70 civilians and non-combatants. In Israel, strikes launched from Lebanon have killed 14 soldiers and 10 civilians.