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40 countries demand halt to Israel's attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

Vehicles from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrol in Marjayoun in southern Lebanon on October 12, 2024. (AFP)

Forty countries contributing to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon demand an immediate halt to Israel’s attacks on peacekeepers.

At least five members of the mission, known as UNIFIL, have been wounded in south Lebanon in recent days amid Israel’s invasion of the country.

UNIFIL said the regime’s forces had "deliberately" fired shots at its headquarters in the town of Naqoura in recent days.

"Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated," said the countries in a joint statement, which was posted on X by the Polish UN mission on Sunday.

The contributing nations reaffirm their “full support for UNIFIL's mission and activities, whose principal aim is to bring stabilization and lasting peace in South Lebanon as well as in the Middle East.”

UNIFIL is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah. It was first established as an interim force in 1978 to confirm Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

The mission now involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities.

It said that Israel’s tank fire on Thursday caused two Indonesian peacekeepers to fall off a watch tower in Naqoura. And on Friday night, a peacekeeper in Naqoura “was hit by gunfire.”

Netanyahu demands UNIFIL withdrawal

On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called on UN Secretary-General António Guterres to “get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way.”

"It should be done right now, immediately,” he said in a video statement issued by his office.

UNIFIL, however, made it clear on Saturday that its peacekeepers will stay in Lebanon.

UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti warned on Saturday that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon could very soon turn “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone.”

Israeli airstrike injures 4 Red Cross volunteers

In the meantime, an Israeli airstrike in a village in Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh governorate injured four Lebanese Red Cross volunteers on Sunday.

The Red Cross said in a statement that emergency teams were dispatched to the site of an Israeli airstrike on a home in Srobbine, a village in Nabatiyeh.

As the volunteers searched for victims, it said, the house was struck again, injuring four Red Cross responders and damaging two ambulances.

The injured were transported to a hospital with minor injuries and are reported to be in stable condition.

 


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