UN says Israeli forces battling Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon have fired on United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon peacekeepers, wounding two.Supplied
The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon has accused the Israeli military of firing at its posts in three separate locations, including an attack on its main headquarters in the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura that injured two peacekeepers.
The 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is responsible for patrolling between the Israel-Lebanon border and the Litani River in southern Lebanon, an area that has been an all-out war zone since Israel invaded on Oct. 1 with the stated intent of driving the Hezbollah militia away from its frontier.
In a statement, UNIFIL said the injuries occurred Thursday when an Israeli “Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall.” A source on the base told The Globe and Mail that the two injured peacekeepers were Indonesian and that they were not seriously wounded. UNIFIL’s troops are drawn from 49 countries; Canada is not a contributor. The Globe is not naming this source as they were not authorized to publicly share information.
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UNIFIL said Israeli troops had also fired at two other peacekeeping posts on Wednesday. In one incident, gunfire hit the entrance to a bunker where Blue Helmets were sheltering, damaging vehicles and a communications system. The UNIFIL statement described another attack that disabled perimeter-monitoring cameras as “deliberate.”
“We remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times,” the statement said.
Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, whose country contributes one of the largest contingents to UNIFIL, said Thursday that firing at UNIFIL bases was “totally unacceptable” and a violation of international law.
Carolina Riskala, 38, who runs a restaurant across from the UNIFIL base in Naqoura, said she could hear “attacks from both sides all the time,” referring to the Israeli military and Hezbollah. Ms. Riskala has been sheltering on the UNIFIL base since Sept. 30 and said the room where she has been given a chair to sleep on frequently shakes with the force of nearby explosions. “So tell me what is safe, secure?” she wrote in an exchange on WhatsApp.
The Israeli military said that its troops operated on Thursday morning in the Naqoura area, near a UNIFIL base, adding that it instructed the UN forces in the area to remain in protected spaces, after which the Israeli forces opened fire.
Canada, which has been largely supportive of Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon, on Thursday said the incident was “alarming and unacceptable.”
“Canada calls for the protection of peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, and for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on social media platform X.
In recent days, the Israeli military has widened its offensive in southern Lebanon, a campaign that Israel says is necessary to allow for the return of roughly 60,000 residents of northern Israel who were evacuated from their homes last year when Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border.
The Hezbollah attacks began one day after the Palestinian militant group Hamas staged a shocking invasion of southern Israel, killing almost 1,200 people and taking another 250 back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
More than 2,000 Lebanese, including hundreds of Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has driven hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes. Thirty-nine Israeli soldiers and police, as well as at least 32 civilians, have been killed on the country’s northern front over the same period.
Israel views UNIFIL – which was given a new mandate after a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah – as a failed mission because it was unable to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its military presence south of the Litani River. A key condition of UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, is that only the Lebanese Army should be present south of the Litani.
Four UN observers, including Canadian Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, were killed by an Israeli air strike during the 2006 war. The Israeli military said the bunker where Maj. Hess-von Kruedener and the others were sheltering was hit by mistake.
Separately, multiple Israeli media outlets reported on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had asked UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for assisting Palestinian refugees, to evacuate its headquarters on Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem.
Israel’s parliament voted in July to label UNRWA, which provides basic services to some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees scattered around the Middle East, a “terrorist” organization and ban it from operating on Israeli territory. Canada was among several Western countries that suspended financial support of UNRWA – in Canada’s case, from January to March of this year – after Israel alleged that many of its 13,000 staff in Gaza were Hamas supporters. A UN investigation into the allegation ended in August with the termination of nine employees.
The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that the area where UNRWA is currently located “is slated to become a housing project with 1,440 units, and the project is in its preparatory stages.” Two UNRWA sources said the organization had only heard about the plan via Israeli media. The Globe is not naming these sources as they were not authorized to publicly share information.
Ammunition Hill, named after a former Jordanian military position, is located in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized along with the West Bank and Gaza after a 1967 war – and which the Palestinian Authority claims as the capital of its hoped-for future state. Any new Israeli construction on the site would be illegal under international law.
With a report from Reuters
Video shared with The Globe was shot from the base of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon has accused the Israeli military of firing at its posts in three separate locations, including an attack on its main headquarters in the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura that injured two peacekeepers.