BERLIN: A German warship deployed as part of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon has shot down a drone off the Lebanese coast, the German army said Thursday.
“An unidentifiable unmanned aerial vehicle was detected in the vicinity” of the “Ludwigshafen am Rhein” corvette and was “brought down in a controlled manner,” an army spokesman said.
The spokesman said he was unable to provide further details for “reasons of operational security.”
Andrea Tenenti, a UNIFIL spokesman, confirmed that earlier on Thursday “an unmanned aerial vehicle of unknown origin approached one of UNIFIL’s Maritime Task Force ships off the southern Lebanese coast.”
“In accordance with procedure, electronic countermeasures were used and the UAV fell and exploded on its own,” Tenenti said, adding that UNIFIL was “looking into the matter.”
The UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon has come under repeated fire in the Israeli-Hezbollah war in recent days.
Five peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest seeing the UN force accuse Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions.
The Israeli military has said is not targeting UN peacekeepers, but the incidents have sparked a wave of international criticism.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon to stem Palestinian attacks targeting northern Israel.
The peacekeeping mission includes about 10,000 personnel overall, with its Maritime Task Force focused on preventing arms smuggling by sea.
German UNIFIL warship intercepts drone off Lebanon
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German UNIFIL warship intercepts drone off Lebanon
- Andrea Tenenti, a UNIFIL spokesman, confirmed that earlier on Thursday “an unmanned aerial vehicle of unknown origin approached one of UNIFIL’s Maritime Task Force ships”
- “In accordance with procedure, electronic countermeasures were used and the UAV fell and exploded on its own”
Algeria parliament to vote on law declaring French colonization ‘state crime’
- The vote comes as the two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis
ALGERIA: Algeria’s parliament is set to vote on Wednesday on a law declaring France’s colonization of the country a “state crime,” and demanding an apology and reparations.
The vote comes as the two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis, and analysts say that while Algeria’s move is largely symbolic, it could still be politically significant.
The bill states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused,” according to a draft seen by AFP.
The proposed law “is a sovereign act,” parliament speaker Brahim Boughali was quoted by the APS state news agency as saying.
It represents “a clear message, both internally and externally, that Algeria’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable,” he added.
France’s colonization of Algeria from 1830 until 1962 remains a sore spot in relations between the two countries.
French rule over Algeria was marked by mass killings and large-scale deportations, all the way to the bloody war of independence from 1954-1962.
Algeria says the war killed 1.5 million people, while French historians put the death toll lower at 500,000 in total, 400,000 of them Algerian.
French President Emmanuel Macron has previously acknowledged the colonization of Algeria as a “crime against humanity,” but has stopped short of offering an apology.
Asked last week about the vote, French foreign ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux said he would not comment on “political debates taking place in foreign countries.”
Hosni Kitouni, a researcher in colonial history at the University of Exeter in the UK, said that “legally, this law has no international scope and therefore is not binding for France.”
But “its political and symbolic significance is important: it marks a rupture in the relationship with France in terms of memory,” he said.
