Most evenings in al-Habbariyeh, a small town in the green hills of southern Lebanon, the young volunteers of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps Center met to play cards or smoke an argileh (water pipe).

On March 26, a clear, brisk night, Abdullah Sharif Atwi, Abdulrahman al-Shaar, Ahmad al-Shaar, Baraa Abu Qais, Hussein al-Shaar, Muhammad al-Farouq Atwi and Muhammad Ragheed Hammoud were in the meeting place on the second floor.

The Israeli drones hovered over us. They had been in operation all day and now their noise had almost faded into the background.

The group was in a great mood, making videos of themselves and making jokes.

About half an hour after midnight, shortly after March 27, Israel hit the center with an airstrike, razing the two-story building to the ground.

“People from the village ran down to see what had happened,” Ali Noureddine, a journalist and activist from al-Habbariyeh, told Al Jazeera. “It's a small village,” he said. “We are all one family.”

The seven young men were killed and four others seriously injured.

Most of the 18 to 25 year olds were students.

Hunted health workers

On that day alone, Israel killed a total of 17 people in three different cities, including ten medical personnel.

The attack made March 27 the deadliest day for medical personnel in southern Lebanon.

An attack on a cafe in Ras al-Naqoura killed a medical worker from Amal's Al-Risala Scouts and three other people, including an Amal member.

The third attack that day occurred in Tayr Harfa, killing two Hezbollah Islamic Health Association medics and four Hezbollah fighters.

The Israeli army spokesman said the attack in al-Habbariyeh successfully hit a “significant terrorist” in al-Jamaa al-Islamiya.

“They did not say who the 'terrorist' was,” Mahyaddine Qarhani, director of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps Ambulance Association, told Al Jazeera.

Investigations by human rights organizations found no evidence of military activity or fighters on the ground.

Human rights monitoring called that the attack on al-Habbariyeh be investigated as a war crime, as leading human rights groups are currently investigating other Israeli attacks on medical personnel.

Hezbollah and Israel have been carrying out attacks across the border on each other since October 8. The day before, Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on Israel that left 1,139 people dead and around 240 captured.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 92,600 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon by the relentless Israeli attacks.

Those still living in the south are at risk, such as the elderly and low-income people who depend on medical care provided by the Lebanese Emergency Relief Corps.

Like many other services in the country, Lebanon's healthcare system is largely privatized, with the Ministry of Health relying on private groups and NGOs to fill the gaps.

The medical situation in Lebanon was already severely affected by the economic crisis that had lasted for five years; 80 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.

Now the south is also struggling with the war and its few medical professionals and facilities are being attacked by Israel.

Data on attacks in southern Lebanon is hard to find, and locals say many incidents go unreported.

Al Jazeera collected data from monitoring groups indicating at least 18 Israeli attacks on medical personnel and facilities, leaving 20 health workers dead.

They include members of the Lebanese Civil Defense Force as well as medical personnel from the medical branches of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement and al-Jamaa al-Islamiya.

Each group has an armed wing that comes into conflict with the Israeli military, but their health workers are protected under international humanitarian law.

This protection as medical personnel only expires if they participate in military activities.

Several sources, including representatives of leading human rights and monitoring bodies, told Al Jazeera that there was no evidence that this was the case in any of the attacks on medical personnel.

None of the attacks showed “evidence of a link to the armed wing of these groups,” Ameneh Mehvar, Middle East specialist at ACLED, told Al Jazeera.

Possible war crimes

The attacks on medical personnel in southern Lebanon have been barely reported, although they are contributing to a significant deterioration in the quality of life of those remaining there.

Medical personnel cannot be attacked, “even if they are near military targets,” Shane Darcy, professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.

“Even if there is a Hezbollah [fighter] The principle of proportionality currently means [Israel’s military] “The government needs to weigh up the impact on civil society and proportionality,” a source at a reputable human rights organization told Al Jazeera in the background.

There is no exact formula for proportionality, Darcy said, but intentionally attacking and killing civilians is a crime.

“There are many dangers [for medical workers]”, Dr. Wahida Ghalayni, who works at the Ministry of Health, told Al Jazeera. “These are direct attacks [on them].”

Given Israel's lack of accountability and ongoing attacks, Lebanon's medical workers feel that Israel is directly targeting them.

A day before the attack on al-Habbariyeh, on March 26, an Israeli airstrike hit the Tayr Harfa civil defense center, injuring four health workers.

Subsequently, according to data collected by ACLED, “two Hezbollah medics were killed in a second attack at the same location on the same day.”

“This is nothing new,” Rabieh Issa, civil protection officer for Al-Risala Scouts, told Al Jazeera.

“We usually don't move out until 15 minutes after the first hit because they keep hitting. So for our own safety, we wait a little longer.”

But it is not just the fighter jets that the medical personnel in question must be on guard against.

According to ACLED, Israeli warplanes attacked Yarine on March 21 during fighting with Hezbollah.

Israel said they targeted Hezbollah's military infrastructure, but this does not explain why ambulances arriving after the attack came under “heavy machine gun fire” from the Israelis.

And there are many more incidents.

On March 4, an Israeli airstrike hit a medical center in the Al-Ouwayni neighborhood of Odaisseh, killing three Hezbollah-affiliated health workers. On February 22, four Lebanese Civil Defense personnel were killed in airstrikes on Blida. On January 11, two medics were killed in the southern city of Hanin when Israeli jets struck the Islamic Health Society building.

Israel claims it is attacking “Hezbollah cells,” but many of its attacks on medical personnel or medical facilities have not killed any fighters.

In April, media outlet +972mag reported on Lavender, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system that Israel uses to select targets for assassinations and calculate “acceptable civilian casualties” for each killing.

In the case of a low-ranking Hamas member, the Israeli army has authorized the death of 15 to 20 civilians, while “on several occasions the army has authorized the killing of over 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.”

“Any international humanitarian lawyer would be hard-pressed to say that this is an acceptable application of proportionality,” Darcy said. “These are potential war crimes.”

Gaps in the south

Back in al-Habbariyeh, the Israeli attack has left a huge gap in the community.

“We are a small village… everyone is grieving,” said Noureddine, who regularly visited friends at the center.

“Israel hits whoever it wants. I don't know whether anyone will die tomorrow or not.”

But the decimated team has also left a huge gap in the community's medical care.

The Emergency and Relief Corps suspended its operations in al-Habbariyeh following the attack, fearing that relocating operations would only lead to attacks on civilians in other neighborhoods.

“We can no longer work in this area,” he said. “Nobody knows why they attacked the center, but it is completely destroyed.”

The outskirts of al-Habbariyeh were hit just a month ago.

“Israel is still attacking us, and if we build a new center, they will come and bomb it again,” Noureddine said. “They are attacking civilians, and we don't have people whose lives we can just sacrifice.”

“The Americans give weapons to the Israelis and attack us with them, and no one holds them accountable or even looks at what they are doing,” Noureddine said.

“No one is held accountable for Israel’s attacks.”