(Beirut) Three peacekeepers were lightly injured Sunday in an explosion in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, where exchanges of fire are daily between the Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, the UN force announced.
The peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has opened an investigation after three of its members “on patrol were slightly injured in an explosion near their clearly marked UN vehicle, in the vicinity of Yarine”.
They then returned to their base, she added in a statement.
Lebanon’s national news agency ANI reported earlier that “Israeli enemy warplanes” struck the village of Dhayra, one kilometer from Yarine, injuring people.
A source within UNIFIL told AFP that the explosion was probably caused by a nearby airstrike that did not directly target the peacekeepers.
The mandate of UNIFIL, which has 10,000 troops, expires at the end of August, but is expected to be renewed by the Security Council.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, launched by Israel on October 7 in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israeli soil the same day, cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel have been almost daily, with the Lebanese Islamist movement claiming to attack Israel in support of its ally Hamas and the Palestinian people.
PHOTO KARAMALLAH DAHER, REUTERS ARCHIVES
The peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has opened an investigation after three of its members “on patrol were slightly injured in an explosion near their clearly marked UN vehicle, in the vicinity of Yarine”.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said on Sunday that one person was killed and another injured “in an Israeli airstrike” that targeted a motorcycle in the southern Lebanese town of Shebaa.
The Lebanese Resistance Brigades, a Hezbollah-affiliated group, said one of its fighters had been “martyred,” without specifying where. The Lebanese Islamist movement later claimed to have fired Katyusha rockets at a military post in northern Israel in retaliation.
The head of the UN peacekeeping force, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said in early August that the role of UNIFIL on the Israeli-Lebanese border was “more important than ever”, as fears of a military escalation in the Middle East grow.
According to him, these forces are “the only channel of communication between the Israeli side and the Lebanese side with its various components, such as Hezbollah.”
Since October 8, violence between Israel and Hezbollah has left at least 582 dead in Lebanon, mostly fighters, but also at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP count.
In Israel and the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians were killed, according to Israeli authorities.