Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank

Special Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank
Public anger was sparked by the killing of Aysenur Ezgi in Israeli shooting. (Reuters)
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Updated 11 September 2024
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Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank

Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank
  • Aysenur Ezgi Eygi believed shot by Israeli troops while taking part in peaceful protest against settlement expansion
  • International community has condemned the wave of attacks on Palestinians and their allies since Oct. 7 last year

LONDON: On Saturday afternoon, two young women lay side by side in a hospital morgue in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Unknown to each other but united in death, one was the victim of the increasingly unbridled Israeli settler violence in the West Bank.

The other had died at the hands of the Israeli military while protesting against that very same violence.

The first to die was Bana Amjad Bakr, a 13-year-old girl killed on Friday night in her bedroom at home in Qaryut, a village 15 km south of Nablus. She was reportedly hit by a stray bullet fired by Israeli forces.

According to Yesh Din, an Israeli non-profit organization that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation, Bakr was fatally wounded after dozens of settlers, “protected” by Israeli soldiers, stormed her village.

The teenager was taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead.




Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghlas (3-R) stands in front of the bodies of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26 (L) and 13-year-old Palestinian Bana Baker at a hospital morgue in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on September 7, 2024. (AFP)

But the tragedy of her passing and her family’s grief would have gone unnoticed by the wider world — were it not for events that unfolded the following day.

On Saturday morning, a Turkish-born American citizen was shot in the head by Israeli troops in the village of Beita, just 8 km north of where Bana had been mortally wounded in Qaryut.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old from Washington state, had been taking part for the first time in the regular weekly protest organized by the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement against the town’s expanding Jewish settlement.

Just three months ago, Eygi had graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she had studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures.




Palestinian activists lift a banner and portraits of slain Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi during a funeral procession in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on September 9, 2024. (AFP)

In a statement, her family said she had been active in pro-Palestinian protests on campus and had felt morally compelled to travel to the West Bank and “stand in solidarity with Palestinian civilians.”

According to eyewitness accounts, Eygi and other protesters had taken refuge in an olive grove after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas as the peaceful protest began to disperse.

“The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill,” said a spokesperson for ISM.

“Initially, the army fired a large amount of tear gas and then began using live ammunition.”

It was then that Eygi, who appeared to be deliberately targeted by an Israeli sniper, was shot in the back of the head.




Israeli forces take position following a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Qaryut on September 15, 2023. (AFP)

ISM denied “repeated false claims” that demonstrators had been throwing rocks. “All eye-witness accounts refute this claim,” said the spokesperson.

“Aysenur was more than 200 meters away from where the Israeli soldiers were, and there were no confrontations there at all in the minutes before she was shot.

“Regardless, from such a distance neither she nor anyone else could possibly have been perceived as posing any threat. She was killed in cold blood.”

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It was Eygi’s death, and not Bakr’s, that prompted international outrage and global headlines. A spokesperson for the UN secretary-general demanded a “full investigation of the circumstances” and accountability for the death of the dual American-Turkish citizen.

The US government also called for an investigation, with a National Security Council spokesperson saying the White House was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen.”




Members of the Palestinian security forces carry the body of 13-year-old Bana Amjad Bakr during her funeral in Nablus. (AFP)

Meanwhile, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it held the Israeli government responsible for Eygi’s death and pledged to bring those who killed her to justice.

Although such killings add impetus to the growing international alarm over Israel’s behavior, in Gaza and the West Bank, the death of a single foreign activist at the hands of Israeli soldiers frequently garners more global coverage than multiple killings of Palestinians.

As ISM pointed out, “the human rights activist, who we consider a martyr in the struggle, was the 18th demonstrator to be killed in Beita since 2020” — the youngest of whom was just 13 years old.

Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, paid his respects to Eygi and Bakr in an emotional visit to the morgue in Rafidia hospital on Saturday. “Both were killed by the same bullets,” he said.

“We call on the international community to stop the insane war on Palestine. Bullets do not differentiate between activists and a Palestinian child.”




People check a burnt car a day after an attack by Jewish settlers on the village of Jit near Nablus that left a 23-year-old man dead and others with critical gunshot wounds, on August 16, 2024. (AFP)

Over the years, several American nationals have lost their lives while protesting in solidarity with Palestinians. One of the most infamous cases occurred more than 20 years ago, in March 2003, when another member of ISM was killed.

Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist from Washington state, was crushed by an armored military bulldozer during a protest against the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians do not forget their friends. Many children born after Corrie’s death carry her first name and a street in Ramallah is named for her. But until now it has been difficult to conclude that sacrifices such as hers have not been in vain.

The marked difference in the response of the US government then and now shows how less tolerant global opinion has become toward Israel’s behavior.

US CITIZENS KILLED BY ISRAELIS

  • May 2003: Rachel Corrie, 23, crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer during Gaza protest.
  • May 31, 2010: Furkan Dogan, 19, shot by Israeli troops during Gaza Flotilla raid.
  • Jan. 13, 2022: Omar Assad, 78, died in Israeli custody in the West Bank.
  • May 11, 2022: Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, shot by Israeli troops while reporting in the West Bank.
  • Jan. 20, 2024: Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, shot by Israeli gunmen in the West Bank.
  • Feb. 10, 2024: Mohammad Ahmad Khdour, 17, shot by Israeli gunmen in the West Bank.
  • Sept. 6, 2024: Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, shot by Israeli troops during West Bank protest.

Back in 2003, 77 members of the US Congress signed a resolution “expressing sympathy for the loss of Rachel Corrie in the Palestinian village of Rafah in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003,” calling on the US government “to undertake a full, fair, and expeditious investigation” into her death.

No such investigation followed. But following the killing of Eygi this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “when we have more info, we will share it, make it available and, as necessary, we’ll act on it.”

Eygi is at least the third US citizen known to have been killed in the West Bank since October. In February, Palestinian-American Mohammad Ahmad Alkhdour, 17, was reportedly shot twice by Israeli forces northwest of Jerusalem.

In January, another 17-year-old Palestinian-American national, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, was killed in similar circumstances.




A Palestinian girl holds posters of US peace activist Rachel Corrie during a protest marking the anniversary of her death at a refugee camp in Rafah on March 16, 2013. (AFP)

The settler movement, ultimately responsible for the deaths at the weekend of both Bakr and Eygi, may yet prove to be the undoing of an Israeli government that has not only given it free rein to expand settlements, but has also armed it to the teeth.

Toward the end of last month, it emerged that the head of Israel’s security agency had written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing the extremist settler movement of terrorism.

Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet, warned that the increasingly violent actions of the “hilltop youth” were out of control and “a large stain on Judaism and on all of us.”

He added: “The damage to Israel, especially at this time, and to the majority of the settlers is indescribable: A loss of global legitimacy even among our best friends.”

Bar blamed nationalist politicians, in particular Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. By encouraging and arming the extremists, they were “willing to jeopardize the state’s security and its very existence” in the pursuit of their ideological ambitions, he said.




Palestinian medics transport a man who was injured in a reported attack by Israeli settlers in the village of Qusra, into Rafidia Hospital in Nablus on August 31, 2024. (AFP)

International Crisis Group recently reported there had been a record 1,246 attacks on Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7, causing 21 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and, as part of a deliberate policy to sabotage livelihoods, the systematic destruction of 23,000 trees.

“Settler violence is at an all-time high, with Israeli settlers harassing, terrorizing and killing Palestinians across the West Bank in greater numbers and with greater frequency and fervor,” Mairav Zonszein, the ICG’s senior Israel analyst, said in a statement on Friday.

“They are emboldened by a government committed to deepening control over the West Bank and foiling a Palestinian state.”

She added: “To stem settler violence, the US and other Western countries should target not only individual settlers but state entities and policies that bolster the settlement enterprise.”

But in weakening support for Israel in the West, ultimately it may be the reckless behavior of the settlers and their political supporters — and the death of foreign activists like Eygi — that will backfire on Netanyahu and his government.

 


Fresh protests in Turkiye over violence against women

Women shout slogans during a protest against violence against women in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP)
Women shout slogans during a protest against violence against women in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP)
Updated 13 October 2024
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Fresh protests in Turkiye over violence against women

Women shout slogans during a protest against violence against women in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP)
  • Erdogan, having initially blamed alcohol and social media, on Wednesday promised to toughen the justice system and crack down harder on crime

ISTANBUL: Hundreds of women protested in Turkiye Saturday against a wave of murders of women, the latest rallies in response to a recent double slaying in Istanbul.
A crowd of hundreds in Istanbul chanted slogans denouncing Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted AKP party, an AFP correspondent reported.
“You are a government that lets young girls get killed,” one of the rally’s organizers, Gunes Fadime Aksahin, told the crowd.
Gulizar Sezer, the mother of a young woman who was murdered, also addressed the rally. Her daughter’s body was found in June after being thrown into the sea wrapped in a carpet.
Other protests took place in the capital Ankara and Izmir, another major city, according to photos posted by a women’s rights federation.
There have been similar such protests every day for a week across the country, notably on university campuses.
A man arrested on suspicion of having killed two young women on the same night took his own life last week, sparking the protests.
The suspect and the two women were all aged 19, said Istanbul officials. The women had been killed within 30 minutes of each other, they added.
It was not known if they knew their attacker.
Erdogan, having initially blamed alcohol and social media, on Wednesday promised to toughen the justice system and crack down harder on crime.
Turkiye has struggled to contain a wave of killings of women.
One monitoring group says there have been 299 murders of women this year in the country of 85 million people, with more than 160 “suspect” killings officially classed as suicides or accidents.
In 2021, Turkiye withdrew from the Council of Europe convention on preventing violence against women, known as the Istanbul convention.
It obliges national authorities to investigate and punish violence against women.

 


Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians

Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
Updated 13 October 2024
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Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians

Israel’s airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
  • The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month

BEIRUT: As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes.
Moein Shreif was recently awakened at 3 a.m. by a neighbor calling to alert him that Israel planned to strike a nearby building in his middle-class suburb south of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Shreif, his wife and their three children quickly fled their multi-story apartment building and drove away. Within minutes, explosions rang out, he said later that day upon returning to see the smoldering ruins of his building and the one next door.
“I didn’t even have time to dress properly, as you can see,” said Shreif, a well-known Lebanese folk and pop singer who was still wearing his pajamas from the night before. “I didn’t take anything out of the house.”
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging strikes nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will fire rockets into Israel until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza; Israel says its fighting to stop those attacks, which have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.
But it wasn’t until late last month, when Israel dramatically expanded its aerial campaign against Hezbollah, that Lebanese people began receiving regular warnings about upcoming airstrikes. Human rights groups say Israel’s warnings — which aren’t issued before many airstrikes — are inadequate and sometimes misleading.
On Sept. 23, Israel made 80,000 calls into Lebanon, according to Imad Kreidieh, head of the country’s telecommunications company – presumably recorded warnings about upcoming airstrikes.
The calls caused panic. Schools shut down. People rushed home early from work. It ended up being the deadliest day of airstrikes in Lebanon in decades, with over 500 people killed — roughly one quarter of all those killed in Lebanon the past year, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Women and children make up one quarter of all the deaths, the ministry says.
Israel has issued warnings on social media nearly every day since then.
On Oct. 1, 27 villages in southern Lebanon were told to evacuate to the north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometers (miles) away. “Save your lives,” the instructions said.
That is when Salam, a 42-year-old mother of two, fled the village of Ain Ebel. She and her family are now staying with relatives in Beirut. Salam refused to give her full name for fear of reprisals.
So far, Ain Ebel – a mostly Christian village – hasn’t been bombarded, although surrounding villages whose residents are predominantly Shiite Muslims have been. Salam’s teenage children are terrified of going home, especially since Israel launched a ground invasion.
Salam is still baffled and angry that her village was evacuated.
So far, evacuation notices in Lebanon have been far more limited than in Gaza, but the messages in both places have a common theme. In Gaza, Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants embedded among Gaza’s civilians. In Lebanon, it warns of similar behavior by Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
Most of the Israeli military’s warnings first appear on the social media accounts of its Arabic spokesperson. They are then amplified by the Lebanese media.
The warnings instruct people to vacate homes “immediately,” and they are usually followed by a series of overnight strikes that often cause damage in areas beyond those that were warned. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah fighters, weapons or other assets belonging to the group. Warnings are rarely issued before daytime strikes.
The Lebanese government says at least 1.2 million people have been displaced by the war, the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month. Over 800 of some 1,000 shelters are over capacity.
One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the UN’s human rights division.
“Calling on residents of nearly 30 villages to leave ‘immediately’ is not effective and unlawfully suggests that civilians who do not leave an area will be deemed to be combatants,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Beirut.
Kaiss said Israel — which usually issues warnings 30 to 90 minutes ahead of airstrikes — is obligated to protect civilians who refuse to evacuate, or who are physically unable to.
Amnesty International is also critical of Israel’s practice of warning entire towns and villages to evacuate. It “raises questions around whether this is intended to create the conditions for mass displacement,” Agnes Callamard, the group’s secretary general said in a statement on Thursday.
The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it makes a significant effort to save civilian lives with its warnings.
For almost a year, Israel’s strikes were mostly concentrated in communities along the border, far from the capital and its populous suburbs. But now people who once felt relatively safe in the outskirts of Beirut are increasingly at risk, and their neighborhoods are receiving a small but growing share of airstrike warnings.
In Shreif’s case, he said his neighbor called about five minutes after the Israeli military issued a warning on the social media platform X.
Shreif considers himself lucky: If it wasn’t for that wake-up call, his family might not be alive. The AP could not determine whether any people were killed or injured in the strike that destroyed Shreif’s building or the one next door.
To the northeast of Beirut, in the Bekaa Valley, Israel recently issued a warning to people to stay at least 1,000 meters (yards) away from their town or village if they are in or a near a home that has weapons belonging to Hezbollah.
Some of the warnings have come in the form of animated videos. One shows an elderly woman in a kitchen, suggesting she is unaware of hidden rooms and compartments in her own house that contain weapons for Hezbollah.
“Didn’t you know?” the narrator says in Arabic, as the elderly woman discovers rockets under the couch, behind the shower curtains and elsewhere. The video warns viewers to leave their homes immediately if they – or their neighbors – discover weapons.
But in many cases there are no warnings at all.
Last month, in Ain el-Delb near the southern city of Sidon, an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building, burying about 70 people under the rubble.
Achraf Ramadan, 34, and his father were among the lucky one who rescue workers were able to pull out alive. His mother was taken to the hospital alive, but she later died from her wounds. His younger sister Julia, a public relations professional in her late 20s, was found dead. Achraf and Julia together had been leading initiatives to support displaced Lebanese families in and around Sidon.
“This is a nice and peaceful neighborhood,” Ramadan said, sounding dejected. “The international community is asleep and not taking initiative. On the contrary, I think it’s giving Israel an excuse for its barbarity on the pretext of self-defense.”


As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon’s army watches from the sidelines

As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon’s army watches from the sidelines
Updated 13 October 2024
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As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon’s army watches from the sidelines

As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon’s army watches from the sidelines
  • Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one

BEIRUT: Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.
It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.
Lebanon’s widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country’s sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.
But with an aging arsenal and no air defenses, and battered by five years of economic crisis, the national army is ill-prepared to defend Lebanon against either aerial bombardment or a ground offensive by a well-equipped modern army like Israel’s.
The army is militarily overshadowed by Hezbollah. The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, with around 5,000 of them deployed in the south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the militant group’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Its arsenal — built with support from Iran — is also more advanced.
A cautious initial response
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted a major aerial bombardment of Lebanon and a ground invasion that it says aims to push Hezbollah back from the border and allow displaced residents of northern Israel to return.
As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 5 kilometers (3 miles) back.
So far, Israeli forces have not advanced that far. The only direct clashes between the two national armies were on Oct. 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army position in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier, and on Friday, when two soldiers were killed in an airstrike in the same area. The Lebanese army said it returned fire both times.
Lebanon’s army declined to comment on how it will react if Israeli ground forces advance farther.
Analysts familiar with the army’s workings said that, should the Israeli incursion reach the current army positions, Lebanese troops would put up a fight — but a limited one.
The army’s “natural and automatic mission is to defend Lebanon against any army that may enter Lebanese territory,” said former Lebanese Army Gen. Hassan Jouni. “Of course, if the Israeli enemy enters, it will defend, but within the available capabilities … without going to the point of recklessness or suicide.”
Israeli and Lebanese armies are ‘a total overmatch’
The current Israeli invasion of Lebanon is its fourth into the neighboring country in the past 50 years. In most of the previous invasions, the Lebanese army played a similarly peripheral role.
The one exception, said Aram Nerguizian, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, was in 1972, when Israel attempted to create a 20-kilometer (12-mile) buffer zone to push back Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters.
At that time, Nerguizian said, the Lebanese army successfully slowed the pace of the Israeli advance and “bought time for political leadership in Beirut to seek the intervention of the international community to pressure Israel for a ceasefire.”
But the internal situation in Lebanon — and the army’s capabilities — deteriorated with the outbreak of a 15-year civil war in 1975, during which both Israeli and Syrian forces occupied parts of the country.
Hezbollah was the only faction that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war, for the stated goal of resisting Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon — which ended in 2000.
By 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a bruising monthlong war, the Lebanese army “had not been able to invest in any real-world post-war modernization, had no ability to deter Israeli air power” and “was left completely exposed,” Nerguizian said. “The few times that the (Lebanese army) and Israeli forces did engage militarily, there was total overmatch.”
International aid has been a mixed blessing
After the 2011 outbreak of civil war in neighboring Syria and the rise of the Islamic State militant group there, the Lebanese army saw a new influx of military aid. It successfully battled against IS on Lebanon’s border in 2017, although not alone — Hezbollah was simultaneously attacking the group on the other side of the border.
When Lebanon’s financial system and currency collapsed in 2019, the army took a hit. It had no budget to buy weapons and maintain its existing supplies, vehicles and aircraft. An average soldier’s salary is now worth around $220 per month, and many resorted to working second jobs. At one point, the United States and Qatar both gave a monthly subsidy for soldiers’ salaries.
The US had been a primary funder of the Lebanese army before the crisis. It has given some $3 billion in military aid since 2006, according to the State Department, which said in a statement that it aims “to enable the Lebanese military to be a stabilizing force against regional threats” and “strengthen Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure its borders, counter internal threats, and disrupt terrorist facilitation.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has also touted the Lebanese army as a key part of any diplomatic solution to the current war, with hopes that an increased deployment of its forces would supplant Hezbollah in the border area.
But that support has limits. Aid to the Lebanese army has sometimes been politically controversial within the US, with some legislators arguing that it could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, although there is no evidence that has happened.
In Lebanon, many believe that the US has blocked the army from obtaining more advanced weaponry that might allow it to defend against Israel — America’s strongest ally in the region and the recipient of at least $17.9 billion in US military aid in the year since the war in Gaza began.
“It is my personal opinion that the United States does not allow the (Lebanese) military to have advanced air defense equipment, and this matter is related to Israel,” said Walid Aoun, a retired Lebanese army general and military analyst.
Nerguizian said the perception is “not some conspiracy or half-truth,” noting that the US has enacted a legal requirement to support Israel’s qualitative military edge relative to all other militaries in the region.


40 nations contributing to UN Lebanon peacekeeping force condemn ‘attacks’

40 nations contributing to UN Lebanon peacekeeping force condemn ‘attacks’
Updated 13 October 2024
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40 nations contributing to UN Lebanon peacekeeping force condemn ‘attacks’

40 nations contributing to UN Lebanon peacekeeping force condemn ‘attacks’
  • At least five peacekeepers were wounded by Israeli fire in the past 48 hours as Israel takes its fight against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon
  • UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah

UNITED NATIONS, United States: Forty nations that contribute to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.
Other signatories include Ghana, Nepal, Malaysia, Spain, France and China — all countries that have contributed several hundred troops to the force.
At least five peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israel takes its fight against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon.
The peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, has accused the Israeli military of “deliberately” firing on its positions.
The 40 contributing countries “reaffirm our full support for UNIFIL’s mission and activities, whose principal aim is to bring stabilization and lasting peace in South Lebanon as well as in the Middle East,” the statement read.
“We urge the parties of the conflict to respect UNIFIL’s presence, which entails the obligation to guarantee the safety and security of its personnel at all times,” it added.
UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Its role was bolstered by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of that year, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
At a summit on Friday, French, Italian and Spanish leaders said the “attacks” on UNIFIL peacekeepers violated Resolution 1701 and must end.
UNIFIL said that, in recent days, its forces have “repeatedly” come under fire in the Lebanese town of Naqura where it is headquartered, as well as in other positions.
The mission said that Israeli tank fire on Thursday caused two Indonesian peacekeepers to fall off a watch tower in Naqura.
The following day it said explosions close to an observation tower in Naqura wounded two Sri Lankan Blue Helmets, while Israel said it had responded to an “immediate threat” near a UN peacekeeping position.
On Saturday UNIFIL said a peacekeeper in Naqura “was hit by gunfire” on Friday night.
UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP the peacekeeping mission’s work had become “very difficult because there is a lot of damage, even inside the bases.”
 

 


Lebanon says 15 killed in 3 Israeli strikes outside Hezbollah strongholds

Lebanon says 15 killed in 3 Israeli strikes outside Hezbollah strongholds
Updated 12 October 2024
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Lebanon says 15 killed in 3 Israeli strikes outside Hezbollah strongholds

Lebanon says 15 killed in 3 Israeli strikes outside Hezbollah strongholds
  • The ministry reported “nine dead and 15 wounded” in an “Israeli enemy strike“

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday that at least 15 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on three areas considered outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, updating earlier tolls.
The ministry reported “nine dead and 15 wounded” in an “Israeli enemy strike” on the village of Maaysra north of Beirut, raising an earlier toll of five dead.
It also reported two dead, four wounded and unidentified “body parts” in a Israeli strike on Deir Billa, near the northern town of Batroun, and said four people were killed and 18 wounded in a strike on Barja, raising an earlier toll of 14 wounded for the raid in the Shouf district south of the capital.