Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has condemned Israel’s “systematic destruction” in the country’s south as a violation of international law, as Israel’s defence minister said its military was “destroying all the houses” there, AFP reports.

Salam says Israeli “attacks, incursions, demolitions and the systematic destruction of homes”, infrastructure, government buildings and places of worship “represent a serious violation of the principles and rules of international law and international humanitarian law”.

Claiming that villages and towns “are entirely ‘military facilities’ does not stand up to any logic and cannot be used as an excuse for destroying them, displacing their inhabitants and preventing them from returning”, he says in a statement.