BEIRUT: Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel pledged on Saturday that his government would make “exceptional efforts” to ensure the release of two Turkish pilots kidnapped in Beirut a day earlier, state media said.
Speaking after a meeting with Turkey’s ambassador to Beirut, Inan Ozyildiz, he also promised that Lebanon would make every effort to protect Turkish citizens in the country. “The Lebanese state is making exceptional efforts to free them. The security services are sparing no effort,” Lebanon’s National News Agency quoted Charbel as saying. “We are continuing the investigation to find the two Turks... Lebanon is against any kidnap and the state is doing everything in its power to free them,” he added.
The two Turkish Airlines pilots were kidnapped in the early hours of Friday on the Beirut airport road as they traveled on a bus with their crew to a hotel.
After the kidnapping on Friday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry urged citizens to avoid travel to Lebanon and to leave the country if they were already there. But Charbel said Lebanon would do everything possible to keep Turkish citizens safe. “We will ensure the protection of Turks and everyone else in Lebanon,” he said.
Meanwhile, Turkey plans to pull out troops from the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon UNIFIL, Turkish and UN sources said Saturday, while denying that the decision was linked to the kidnapping of two pilots.
“An approximately 250-person engineering construction force will not be actively involved in UNIFIL in the coming period,” a Turkish diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Both Turkish and UN sources said the troop withdrawal decision was made long before the kidnapping.
“On the 6th of August, we have been informed by the department of peacekeeping operations that the Turkish government decided to withdraw the Turkish engineering construction company,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told AFP.
Lebanon pledges all-out efforts to free Turk pilots
