Mansouri attack

On 13 April 1996, an ambulance was attacked by an Israeli Apache helicopter in the village of Mansouri in Southern Lebanon. According to Wikipedia's account of the incident, the vehicle, a Volvo marked with the word "ambulance" in red, was being driven by Abbas Jiha, a farmer who also volunteered as an ambulance driver. Jiha was transporting wounded people and four of his own children toward the city of Sidon at around 1:30 PM when the helicopter followed the vehicle and fired two missiles at it.

The attack killed six of the thirteen civilians who were in the vehicle attempting to escape the village, among them two women and four children whose ages ranged from seven months to nine years old.

In the aftermath, Israeli officials acknowledged that the vehicle had been deliberately targeted. Major General Moshe Ya'alon stated that the vehicle was "used by fighters to flee." However, an investigation conducted by Amnesty International reportedly found no connection between any of the victims and Hezbollah. Journalist Robert Fisk stated that the attack constituted a breach of the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians even when they are in proximity to armed combatants. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem described the attack as a "blatant violation of the laws of war."

The Mansouri attack is referenced alongside other incidents from the same period of conflict in Southern Lebanon, including the Qana massacre, the Nabatieh Fawka attack, and Operation Grapes of Wrath, the broader Israeli military operation during which these events occurred.

This dossier is based on the Wikipedia article covering the incident. Two additional sources — contemporaneous news coverage from The Independent and The Washington Post — are cited as corroborating references from the article's citation list, but their specific text content was not available for review and no additional facts have been drawn from them beyond their inclusion as sources referenced by the Wikipedia article.