An Irish peacekeeper from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was killed and three others were injured in an “incident” in the south of the country, the circumstances of which have not been specified, UNIFIL and Dublin.
In a statement, UNIFIL said “one peacekeeper was killed and three others were injured last night in an incident near the village of Al-Aqbiya, just outside the area of operations of UNIFIL”.
UNIFIL, deployed in the south of the country to act as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon, said it had “launched an investigation to determine what exactly happened”.
The victims are Irish peacekeepers, according to a press release from the Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense Simon Coveney, who also referred to a “serious incident” without further details.
On Twitter, the Irish Armed Forces reported that a convoy of two peacekeeper vehicles carrying eight soldiers had left UNIFIL’s area of operations and was heading towards Beirut late Wednesday evening when it was “targeted of small arms fire”.
An AFP photographer saw in the village of Al-Aqbiya a UNIFIL vehicle which hit a store on a road leading to the town of Saida further north, about 40 km south of Beirut.
Fire
According to witnesses interviewed by AFP, the car was intercepted by residents as it took a coastal route that is not usually used by peacekeepers.
The driver seems to have lost control of the vehicle while trying to flee the area according to them. Witnesses said they heard gunshots.
UNIFIL forces were deployed on Thursday morning, as well as Lebanese army soldiers who confiscated the surveillance cameras.
Present in Lebanon since 1978, UNIFIL is made up of nearly 10,000 soldiers from different contingents.
There have been past incidents between UNIFIL patrols and pro-Iranian Hezbollah supporters in border areas controlled by the powerful Shiite movement.
On August 31, the UN Security Council renewed UNIFIL’s mandate for one year, but slightly modified the wording.
UNIFIL, which regularly coordinates its patrols and movements in its area of operations with the Lebanese army, is now “authorized to carry out its operations independently”.
The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, had then condemned the modification of the mandate of the Blue Helmets, considering that it constituted a “violation of Lebanese sovereignty”.