BEIRUT: The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said Wednesday that Israeli forces fired on its peacekeepers a day earlier in the country’s south, urging Israel’s army to “cease aggressive behavior.”
It is the latest such incident reported by the peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, where UNIFIL acts as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon and has been working with Lebanon’s army to support a year-old truce between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.
“Yesterday, peacekeepers in vehicles patrolling the Blue Line were fired upon by IDF (Israeli army) soldiers in a Merkava tank,” a UNIFIL statement said, referring to the de facto border.
“One ten-round burst of machine-gun fire was fired above the convoy, and four further ten-round bursts were fired nearby,” the statement said.
It said that both the peacekeepers and the Israeli tank were in Lebanese territory at the time of the incident and that the Israeli military had been informed of the location and timing of the peacekeeping patrol in advance.
“Peacekeepers asked the IDF to stop firing through UNIFIL’s liaison channels... Fortunately, no one was injured,” it said.
Last month UNIFIL said Israeli soldiers shot at its troops in the south, while Israel’s military said it mistook blue helmets for “suspects” and fired warning shots.
In October, UNIFIL said one of its members was wounded by an Israeli grenade dropped near a UN position in the country’s south, the third incident of its kind in just over a month.
“Attacks on or near peacekeepers are serious violations of (UN) Security Council Resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said on Wednesday, referring to the 2006 resolution that formed the basis of the November 2024 truce.
“We call on the IDF to cease aggressive behavior and attacks on or near peacekeepers working to rebuild stability along the Blue Line,” the peacekeepers said.
Israel carries out regular attacks on Lebanon despite the truce, usually saying it is targeting sites and operatives belonging to Hezbollah, which it accuses of rearming.
It has also kept troops in five south Lebanon areas it deems strategic.
On Saturday, a UN Security Council delegation visiting Lebanon urged all parties to uphold the ceasefire.
It emphasized that the “safety of peacekeepers must be respected and that they must never be targeted,” after gunmen on mopeds attacked UNIFIL personnel last week.
UN peacekeepers say Israeli forces fired on them in southern Lebanon
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UN peacekeepers say Israeli forces fired on them in southern Lebanon
- “Yesterday, peacekeepers in vehicles patrolling the Blue Line were fired upon by IDF soldiers in a Merkava tank,” UNIFIL said
- It said that both the peacekeepers and the Israeli tank were in Lebanese territory
South Sudan says its troops are guarding strategic Heglig oil field in Sudan
- Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there
NAIROBI: South Sudan has sent its troops to neighboring Sudan to guard the strategic Heglig oil field near the border, its military head said on Thursday, days after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of it.
Heglig houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which makes up the bulk of South Sudan’s public revenues. Some oil has continued to flow through Heglig, though at much reduced volumes.
Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there, government sources told Reuters on Monday.
General Paul Nang, South Sudan chief of defense forces, said the troop deployment was agreed between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, Sudan Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
“The three agreed that the area of Heglig should be protected because (it) is a very important strategic area for the two countries,” Nang said in comments on state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Radio.
“Now it is the forces of South Sudan that are in Heglig.”
Oil is transported through the Greater Nile pipeline system to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for export, making the Heglig site critical both for Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings and for South Sudan, which is landlocked and relies almost entirely on pipelines through Sudan.
Another pipeline, Petrodar, runs from South Sudan’s Upper Nile State to Port Sudan.
The war that started in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF has repeatedly disrupted South Sudan’s oil flows, which before the conflict averaged between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels per day for export via Sudan.
