WHEN a missile is fired in an armed conflict – even in self- defence – it must target the opposing combatants or a military target. It cannot be fired to target civilians and civilian objects such as the building housing Al Jazeera and AP news agency that was flattened to ground zero by Israeli missiles; or the Palestinian enclave that was the target of Israeli strikes, which killed Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, resulting in the worst daily toll in almost a week of deadly clashes.
It is one of the central rules of armed conflict that civilian casualties are permitted only when they are incidental to an attack on a legitimate military target. The rule is called the collateral damage rule, also known as the proportionality rule. It is meant to offer protection to civilians in wartime (Valerie Epps, 2013).
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