Getty ImagesUS President Joe Biden said he would “absolutely, aggressively” urge Israel to stop firing at UN peacekeepers during the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, after two incidents occurred within 48 hours. ” he said he was looking for.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that its forces were involved in an incident in which two Sri Lankan soldiers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) were injured.
The Israeli military said IDF soldiers operating near the Unifil base in Nakoura perceived a threat and opened fire, adding that the incident would be investigated “at the highest level."
On Thursday, two Indonesian soldiers from Anfil were injured when they fell from the observation tower after Israeli tanks opened fire on it.
The leaders of France, Italy and Spain issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s actions as unjust and calling for an immediate halt.
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “strongly condemns” the Israeli Defense Force attack, which injured two soldiers.
The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission said there was reason to believe that some of the firing on U.N. positions in southern Lebanon was direct, but denied responsibility for the incident.
“For example, there was an incident where the tower caught fire and the camera in one of the positions was also damaged. This clearly looked like an open fire to us,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix told the BBC. He spoke on the News Hour program.
As Israel continued its invasion of southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah continued to fire missiles and rockets across the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The Israel Defense Forces said it detected about 100 rockets that entered northern Israel from Lebanon within 30 minutes on Friday. According to the Israel Defense Forces, two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were detected crossing from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that three people, including a two-year-old girl, were killed in an Israeli military raid on the city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army said two Lebanese soldiers were killed when Israeli forces targeted an army post in the town of Khafra in southern Lebanon.
In the capital Beirut, emergency workers continued searching Thursday for the remains of buildings destroyed by two Israeli airstrikes.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack took place without warning and killed 22 people, all civilians, and injured another 117. Israel has not commented.
The Israeli military launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon last month as it ramped up its response to rocket attacks from Hezbollah.
Hezbollah and Israel have engaged in near-daily cross-border firefights since October last year, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip carried out deadly attacks in southern Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces said the UN post attacked in Nakoula on Friday was about 164 feet (50 meters) from the source of the threat identified by soldiers. At the time, it said it had instructed peacekeepers to remain in a protected space.
Unifil announced that an Israeli military vehicle had climbed over a fence at another UN facility in Rabneh, near the border with Israel.
These cases represent a “serious development”, the newspaper said.
Mikati said Friday’s attack was a “crime directed against the international community.”
EPA
About 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries and about 800 civilian personnel are stationed in Lebanon.
Israel claims Unifil is failing to stabilize the region and has called for peacekeepers to withdraw north to confront Hezbollah.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon reiterated that Israel was asking UNIFIL personnel to withdraw 5 kilometers (3 miles) north to “avoid danger,” but the U.N.’s Jean-Pierre Lacroix said UNIFIL personnel will remain in their positions, it said.
About 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries and about 800 civilian personnel are stationed in Lebanon.
Since 1978, they have patrolled the area between the Litani River and the UN-recognized border between Lebanon and Israel, known as the “Blue Line.”
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on October 8 last year, a day after Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel. The Iran-backed group says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and will stop firing if a ceasefire is reached between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Over the past three weeks, Israel has dramatically escalated its operations against Hezbollah, stepping up airstrikes in southern Lebanon and southern Beirut, assassinating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and launching a ground invasion.
Lebanon has said more than 2,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced, mainly due to the latest escalation. This week, Hezbollah rocket fire killed two Israeli civilians and a Thai national, Israeli authorities said.
AFP (via Getty Images)
A man holds a child as people evacuate from Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: October 9, 2024
In another development on Friday, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency said at least 30 people were killed in Israeli military attacks on the town of Jabalia and a refugee camp in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, news agency AFP reported.
IDF has not commented on the issue.
Meanwhile, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that “thousands of people are trapped in Jabalia refugee camp,” including five of its staff.
MSF said Israeli forces issued an evacuation order in Jabalia on October 7 “while carrying out simultaneous attacks”, making it impossible for people to evacuate safely.
Dr Mohamed Salha, acting director of Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia, told the BBC’s NewsHour program that the area had been under siege for seven days.
He warned that hospitals would run out of fuel on Saturday as Israeli forces “cut off Jabalia from the rest of Gaza.”
“We don’t have medicine, we don’t have medical supplies, we don’t have healthy water, we don’t have fuel, so there’s pressure on these people to move and go directly south,” Dr. Salha said.
Israel says it is carrying out new ground operations in the region, targeting regrouped Hamas fighters for attacks that have left dozens of people dead and wounded in northern Gaza in recent days. It is being
