The Israeli military unlawfully fired white phosphorus munitions over a residential area in the southern Lebanese town of Yohmor on 3 March 2026, Human Rights Watch said on Monday, as the death toll from the broader escalation of hostilities climbed to at least 394.
Human Rights Watch said it verified and geolocated eight images showing airburst white phosphorus munitions deployed over homes in the town, with civil defence workers responding to fires in at least two houses and a car.
The organisation identified the munitions as consistent with the M825-series 155mm artillery projectile.
“The Israeli military’s unlawful use of white phosphorus over residential areas is extremely alarming and will have dire consequences for civilians,” said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The incendiary effects of white phosphorous can cause death or cruel injuries that result in lifelong suffering.”
White phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen and can set homes, agricultural land and other civilian structures ablaze.
Human Rights Watch said the use of airburst white phosphorus in populated areas violates international humanitarian law, which requires all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm.
Earlier on 3 March, Israel’s Arabic military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an evacuation order at 5:27 a.m. telling residents of Yohmor and 50 other villages and towns to move at least 1,000 metres outside their villages to open land.
Adraee repeated the order at 12:12 p.m. Human Rights Watch said it had not verified whether people were in the area or injured as a result of the white phosphorus use.
Photographs posted to Facebook by the Civil Defense Team of the Islamic Health Committee in Yohmor — an organisation affiliated with Hezbollah — showed workers extinguishing fires on residential rooftops and in a car, with smoke rising from the balconies of a home.
The geolocated sites fell within a radius of less than 160 metres of where the airbursts were observed.
Since Israel and Hezbollah’s latest escalation began on 2 March, at least 217 people had been killed in Lebanon as of 6 March, according to the Lebanese health ministry. That figure had risen to 394 by 8 March. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
Human Rights Watch said the Israeli military has issued displacement orders covering the entire population of Lebanon south of the Litani River and all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The group said the sweeping nature of those orders raised serious concerns that their primary purpose was to spread terror rather than protect civilians, and warned of the risk of the war crime of forced displacement.
The organisation called on Israel to prohibit all use of airburst white phosphorus in populated areas and urged the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel.
It also called on Lebanon’s judicial authorities to open domestic investigations into serious international crimes.
Human Rights Watch noted that Israel is not a party to Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons — the only legally binding instrument specifically addressing incendiary weapons — while Lebanon is.
“Israel should immediately halt this practice and states providing Israel with weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, should immediately suspend military assistance and arms sales and push Israel to stop firing such munitions in residential areas,” Kaiss said.
Human Rights Watch added it had previously documented widespread Israeli white phosphorus use across border villages in southern Lebanon between October 2023 and May 2024.
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