Since yesterday, Israel has killed 18 and the Hezbollah 3 of the other side's civilians, according to the reliable official sources. And the US/French peace agreement? Well, to me it reeks a Boltonesque cynicism, just to get a sentence like the following (the third paragraph of the AP/Yahoo article (see link in Press Coverage)):
Hezbollah and its allies rejected the U.S.-French text, saying its terms for a halt in fighting do not address Lebanon's demands -- in a signal that the nearly 4-week-old battle will burn on.
Press Coverage of Civilian Casualties
There is misdirection from CNN and widely shared confusion on the numbers of Israeli civilian casualties.
FoxNews/AP
Although using the same AP copy as Yahoo, Fox somehow provides more accurate figures on civilian deaths.
So far, at least 591 people have died in the fighting in Lebanon including 507 civilians, 34 members of the army and 50 guerrillas aknowledged [sic] dead by Hezbollah. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 400 Hezbollah guerrillas since the fighting began.
Eighty-nine Israelis have died, including at least 33 civilians killed by Hezbollah rockets.
http://www.foxnews.com/...
AP/Yahoo
AP/Yahoo's second paragraph below is misleading, and yet the wording may have been designed to cover early confusion on who died in Kfar Giladi. (Neither AP nor Fox corrected "aknowledged": tacky.)
So far, at least 591 people have died in the fighting in Lebanon including 507 civilians, 34 members of the army and 50 guerrillas aknowledged [sic] dead by Hezbollah. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 400 Hezbollah guerrillas since the fighting began.
It brought the number of Israelis killed so far to 90, 44 of them killed by rocket attacks and the rest soldiers killed in the fighting.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
CNN
CNN goes with the following headline for its main report: 10 Israelis, 8 Lebanese killed as fighting rages. Civilians are not distinguished from non-civilians. There was apparently early confusion on who died on the Israeli side of the border, so the headline may not be deliberately misleading.
CNN has (also apparently) been keeping its own tally on the numbers of Lebanese killed, which has consistently put that number under the most conservative official accounts. Today, however, CNN abandons its own count and provides the number they received from "Lebanese Security Forces." I think I'm finally beginning to figure this thing out: Lebanese security is providing the oft-reported higher figure for the numbers of Lebanese killed, and the Lebanese health ministry is providing the lower figure, which AP has been using. I think.
On Sunday, Lebanese Security Forces said the violence has killed 693 Lebanese, mostly civilians. More than 2,700 Lebanese have been wounded, Lebanese forces reported, and the Lebanese Army has reported hundreds of casualties and 27 deaths among its ranks.
The Israeli death toll stands at 79 -- 33 civilians and the rest soldiers -- according to the IDF. More than 700 civilians and soldiers have been wounded, Israeli ambulance services said.
http://www.cnn.com/...
Reuters
In contrast to CNN, Reuters makes clear the civilian/non-civilian distinction in its headline: Hizbollah kills 10 Israeli soldiers. It then begins its report with several graphic and heartrending paragraphs on the scene of the Israeli soldiers' deaths. Later, in less detail, it describes Lebanese civilian deaths.
Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, has killed 56 Israeli soldiers and 33 civilians in the conflict, sparked when its men snatched two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. ...
At least 748 people have been killed in Lebanon during the war, including five who died in air raids on the Shi'ite village of Ansar overnight. Three civilians were killed in a strike near the southern village of Naqoura, security sources said.
Two more civilians died when an Israeli air strike hit a pickup truck driving about 40 meters (yards) ahead of a U.N. aid convoy heading for the southern city of Tyre, U.N. sources said. A Lebanese army soldier was killed in an air raid near Tyre and another civilian in a strike inside it.
http://today.reuters.com/...
AFP
AFP offers confusion, apparently assuming that those killed in Kfar Giladi were Israeli civilians.
The civilian death toll from Hezbollah rocket fire rose to 43 after a missile hit a building in the town of Kfar Giladi near the Lebanese border. ...
The air raids [on Lebanon] came one day after what Lebanese police said was the heaviest bombing against the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia since the war began. Almost 1,000 Lebanese civilians have been killed, more than 3,000 wounded and an estimated 915,000 left homeless.
http://www.afp.com/...
UK Guardian
The Guardian doesn't provide total casualty numbers of any sort in its main article on the conflict. But if you want to read a take on the peace agreement that will look laughably optimistic in a day or less, click on the link.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/...
BBC
BBC doesn't provide casualty totals of any sort in its main article on the conflict.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
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To help out Lebanon, consider donating to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, at www.ifrc.org.
*Trinitrotoluene offered excellent criticism of this diary a couple days ago and suggested some sort of change to the title, but couldn't think of anything that wasn't wordy. Perhaps the addition of the word "news" and greater title consistency will better clue people in that this diary is primarily a daily account and critique of press coverage of, really more narrowly the (lack of) provision of, the basic facts on how many civilians have been killed in the Lebanon-Israel conflict.