UNIFIL personnel take refuge in bunkers as Israel and Hezbollah exchange attacks

The US does not want UNIFIL “to be in any danger” and justifies the Israeli attacks since it “has not been able to prevent” Hezbollah’s attacks

Oct. 8 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The personnel of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been forced to take refuge in bunkers since this morning due to the exchange of attacks between the Israeli Army and the Lebanese Shiite militia party Hezbollah in the vicinity of one of their positions within Lebanon.

“Due to the security situation, UNIFIL personnel had to take refuge in bunkers since the early hours of today,” said the spokesman for the UN General Secretariat, Stéphane Dujarric, in a press conference in which he mentioned that peacekeepers “have continued to observe intense exchanges of fire” since the weekend.

The spokesperson indicated that airstrikes and ground incursions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have targeted “multiple” areas along the Blue Line, while Hezbollah has launched “dozens of attacks, including to repel” IDF ground incursions and attack areas of northern Israel.

During the weekend, the mission reported to the Israeli authorities the activities of its soldiers near post 6-52, one of the surveillance posts installed on the border, in Marun el Ras, western sector, within Lebanese territory. “This is an extremely dangerous development. It is unacceptable to compromise the security of peacekeeping forces carrying out the mandate entrusted to them by the Security Council,” he said.

The head of UNIFIL, Spanish General Aroldo Lázaro, and the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, have maintained contacts with senior Israeli officials to whom they have conveyed the message of “silence the guns.” “We want the exchange of fire across the Blue Line to stop, whether it’s the IDF attacking targets in Lebanon, including Beirut, whether it’s Hezbollah firing rockets,” Dujarric said.

In this sense, he has reiterated the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1701, which he has “talked about ad nauseam, frankly, without much progress”, and has asked that the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen displaced people on both sides of the border be able to return to their homes “and live in peace, whether in southern Lebanon or northern Israel.”

For its part, the United States Government, through State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, has stated that it does not “want” the UNIFIL forces “to be in any danger”, since they play “an important role in the establishment of security in Lebanon”, although the mission and the Lebanese Army “have not been able to prevent Hezbollah from settling in those areas and launching attacks against Israel”, which is why “Israel is taking measures”.