"The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was 'collateral damage', simply not credible," said Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International.

The document details what it describes as "massive destruction by Israeli forces of whole civilian neighbourhoods and villages", together with attacks on bridges "in areas of no apparent strategic importance", on its list of supporting evidence.

It also says Israel targeted supermarkets, water pumping stations and water treatment plants, which may have broken a prohibition in humanitarian law against targeting objects crucial to civilian survival.

The report lists Israeli statements - such as comments made by Israeli Chief of Staff Lt Gen Dan Halutz that "nothing is safe [in Lebanon], as simple as that" - to support its claims.

Ms Gilmore said Israel's claims that attacks on infrastructure were lawful was "manifestly wrong".

"Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks," said Ms Gilmore. --BBC News

Human Rights Watch investigated some two dozen bombing incidents in Lebanon involving a third of the civilians who by then had been killed. In none of those cases was Hizbullah anywhere around at the time of the attack.

How do we know? Through the same techniques we use in war zones around the world to cut through people's incentive to lie. We probed and cross-checked multiple eyewitnesses, many of whom talked openly of Hizbullah's presence elsewhere but were adamant that Hizbullah was not at the scene of the attack. We examined bombing sites for evidence of military activity such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers and military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters. If we were unsure, we gave the IDF the benefit of the doubt.

The case of Kana shows how this works. After two Israeli missiles killed 28 civilians in a house there on July 30, the IDF initially charged that Hizbullah had been firing rockets from the vicinity of the targeted house. But Human Rights Watch investigators who visited Kana found that there had been no Hizbullah presence near the bomb site at the time of the attack. IDF sources later admitted to an Israeli military correspondent that Hizbullah wasn't shooting at all from Kana that day. --Jerusalem Post