UN peacekeeping base comes under Israeli fire, Indian personnel safe

A UN peacekeeping base in Lebanon came under fire from Israeli forces but Indian peacekeepers there are reported safe. However, two Indonesian peacekeepers at the base, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in Naqoura, were injured on Thursday when an Israeli tank fired at an observation tower, directly hitting it, Farhan Haq, a spokesperson for UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said. “The injuries are fortunately — this time — not serious, but the peacekeepers remain in the hospital,” he said.

Israel is on an increasingly intense ground offensive against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, and the UNIFIL peacekeepers stationed on the Lebanese side along the so-called Blue Line that divides Israel from Lebanon and Syria are caught in the middle of the conflict. Israel asked the UNIFIL to vacate some of its bases, but the peacekeepers have so far remained in positions as mandated by the UN Security Council.

Hezbollah, a militia aligned with Iran, controls wide swathes of southern Lebanon, where the nation's capital Beirut’s writ does not run, and confronts Israel from there in violation of a Security Council resolution.

India has contributed about 900 peacekeepers to the operation and they are spread across several UNIFIL positions, Naqoura being one of them. Haq said Israeli forces also fired at two other positions in the area, including the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering at Labbouneh, and vehicles and a communications system were damaged.

According to UNIFIL, he said, Israeli soldiers “deliberately fired at and disabled the position’s perimeter-monitoring cameras” on Wednesday. The Israeli forces also “deliberately fired” on a UN position in Ras Naqoura -- where regular tripartite meetings were held before the conflict began and lights and a relay station were damaged,” he added.

Under secretary-general Jean-Pierre Lacroix, who heads UN peacekeeping, told the Security Council that these actions “show little regard for the protections afforded to UN premises and personnel under international law”, and that “the safety and security of peacekeepers is now increasingly in jeopardy” at the council’s meeting on the situation in Lebanon.

Israel’s ground operations and intense air bombardment across the country had left much of southern Lebanon where UNIFIL operates uninhabitable, Lacroix also said. Hezbollah continues to fire high-calibre weapons across the Blue Line threatening major population centres in Israel, he added.

Rosemary DiCarlo, under secretary-general for political affairs, said, “Our collective inability to stop the violence and stem the bloodshed is damning.” She called on Hezbollah to stop its rocket and missile attacks on Israel, and Israel to withdraw from Lebanon and stop bombing it.

Indonesia’s deputy permanent representative Hari Prabowo condemned “Israeli’s deliberate attacks to UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, harming two brave Indonesian peacekeepers. Israel's actions against UNIFIL represent a blatant attempt to spread terror on the ground to intimidate both peacekeeping mission and the international community”.