Israel Accuses Iran of War Crimes in Civilian Missile Strikes

Addressing reporters at the missile strike site in Arad, Sa'ar said the attacks demonstrate that Iran is " solely and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian populations" and that there is no "military dimension" to the attacks.

He said, "You can see here very clearly the war crimes of the Iranian regime," Sa'ar said. He added, " You can see a totally civil neighbourhood, no military dimension, and the Iranian regime is solely and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian populations."

He further claimed that since the start of the current conflict between Israel and Iran more than three weeks ago, all casualties from Iranian strikes have been civilians.

"Without any exception from the beginning of this operation, a bit more than three weeks ago, we didn't have even one casualty from Iranian attacks from the military forces," he said. He added, "All the casualties from Iranian attacks without an exception are civilians."

According to Sa'ar, the patterns of attacks indicate a clear "strategy" aimed at increasing "number of civilian casualties".

"So from that simple fact, you can understand the strategy", he said. He added, " The strategy is to shoot on civilian populations in order to increase the number of civilian casualties."

He also pointed to recent missile strikes in multiple locations, including the southern Israeli city of Dimona and the commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

"We had here actually a miracle that seeing the destruction all around that the number of casualties was relatively low," Sa'ar said, adding that children were among those severely injured.

He added, "We had also yesterday, as you know, in Dimona, another attack. In both scenes, we have children that were severely injured. Here, here we had a child, that was literally thrown out from his bed on the third floor, and found himself here."

Sa'ar said that another attack occurred in Tel Aviv shortly before his statement, adding that the strikes lacked any military "meaning".

"And of course, a few minutes ago, we had another attack in Tel Aviv. All of these attacks don't have any military meaning or significance whatsoever," he said. "The only target, the only objective is to hurt as many civilians as possible", he added.

He stated the ongoing attacks as "clearly a war crime." He said, "So it is clearly a war crime."

More than 80 people were injured after a missile strike hit the southern Israeli city of Arad on Saturday night (local time), according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which alleged Iran of targeting civilian population centres.

In a post on X, the IDF said that the attack in the city of Arad caused injuries to over 80 people. Brigadier General (BG) Elad Edri, Chief of Staff of Israel's Home Command, visited the site and described the extent of the damage.

"Here behind me, we can see the point, the exact location, where the missile hit in Arad," Edri said while speaking from the site of the attack. He added, "And here we can see the building that got the hit."

He added that the attack directly struck a populated area, resulting in a large number of casualties.

"Once again, the Iranian enemy aims its missiles into civilian population centres," he said. " We have many dozens of people that got injured, severely, here in the middle of the evening," he added.

- ANI