Pakistan, the European Union and the United Nations chief on Tuesday strongly condemned fatal attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon by Israel over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Three United Nations peacekeepers\u00a0from Indonesia were killed in two separate incidents in southern Lebanon after a bloody weekend in which Lebanese journalists and medics \u200bwere killed in Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres\u00a0strongly condemned the killings.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy deepest condolences to the peacekeepers\u2019 families, friends and\u00a0colleagues and\u00a0to Indonesia, and wishing a full and\u00a0fast recovery to the injured peacekeeper,\u201d he said on X.<\/p>\n
Permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN\u00a0Asim Iftikhar Ahmad\u00a0criticised the killings during an emergency meeting on the UN\u00a0Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) hosted by the UN Security Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cUN personnel are impartial agents of peace; targeting them is a grave violation that undermines international humanitarian law. Failure to ensure the safety of UN personnel undermines the credibility of this council, of peacekeeping, international law, and the collective commitment of the international community to maintain peace and protect civilians,\u201d Ahmad said during the meeting.<\/p>\n
He added that the attacks against peacekeepers were unacceptable and may constitute war crimes under international law.<\/p>\n
He said\u00a0accountability is essential and\u00a0those responsible must be brought to justice.<\/p>\n
Ahmad called\u00a0for a prompt, thorough, transparent\u00a0and impartial investigation to establish the facts.<\/p>\n
“The safety and security of peacekeepers and UN premises must be fully ensured at all times, in full accordance with international law.”<\/p>\n
A group of European nations, as well as the EU, strongly condemned all recent attacks on UNIFIL, calling on Israel to avoid widening the conflict, including through a ground operation.<\/p>\n
In a joint statement,\u00a0foreign ministers of Belgium, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Greek Cypriot administration and the EU foreign policy chief reaffirmed that Lebanon’s territorial integrity must be respected.<\/p>\n
“We call on all parties to immediately de-escalate and to revert to the cessation of hostilities agreement and UN Security Council resolution 1701 (2006),” said the statement.<\/p>\n
It also called for the protection of the civilian population, humanitarian personnel, peacekeepers, and civilian infrastructure, including airports, ports and bridges across the country, in line with international humanitarian law.<\/p>\n
“We reaffirm our concern regarding the forced displacement of over 1 million people in Lebanon,” said the statement.<\/p>\n
The foreign ministers also called on Israel to avoid a further widening of the conflict, including through a ground operation on\u00a0Lebanese territory.<\/p>\n
It added: “We strongly condemn all recent attacks on UNIFIL contingents, which provoked unacceptable casualties among peacekeepers in recent days.”<\/p>\n
Israel has pounded\u00a0Lebanon with airstrikes\u00a0and launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since a cross-border attack by Hezbollah on March 2.<\/p>\n
Lebanese authorities said at least\u00a01,247 people\u00a0have since been killed and 3,690 injured in Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n
Two attacks in 24 hours<\/p>\n
Two peacekeepers were killed on Monday after an explosion from an unknown origin destroyed their vehicle near Bani Hayyan in south Lebanon, UNIFIL said in a statement. Two other soldiers were wounded in the blast.<\/p>\n
Another Indonesian soldier was killed overnight on Sunday into Monday when a projectile exploded near one of the group’s positions close to the southern Lebanese village of Adchit al-Qusayr. Another peacekeeper was critically injured at the time.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0Two UN peacekeepers killed in Lebanon explosion<\/p>\n
The death on Sunday was the first among the UN’s peacekeeping force in the new war between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which erupted on \u200bMarch 2.<\/p>\n
“These are two separate incidents, and we are investigating them as two separate incidents,” said UNIFIL’s spokesperson Kandice Ardiel.<\/p>\n
In response to the first death, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said \u200bon Monday the deceased peacekeeper was one of its citizens and that three others were injured by “indirect artillery fire”.<\/p>\n
Indonesia condemned “in the strongest terms” the \u2060second attack, its foreign ministry said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“This cannot be treated as an isolated occurrence, but reflects a rapidly deteriorating security environment in southern Lebanon, where ongoing Israeli military operations have placed \u200bUnited Nations peacekeepers at grave risk,” it said.<\/p>\n
In a post on X on Tuesday, the country’s Foreign Minister Sugiono called for an emergency UNSC meeting and “for a swift, thorough, and transparent \u200binvestigation” into the “heinous attack” after speaking with Guterres.<\/p>\n
Israel’s military said early on Tuesday it was aware of the reports regarding the two incidents and they were being reviewed thoroughly to determine whether they resulted from Hezbollah or the military’s activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan, the European Union and the United Nations chief on Tuesday strongly condemned fatal attacks on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon by Israel over the weekend. Three United Nations peacekeepers\u00a0from Indonesia were killed in two separate incidents in southern Lebanon after a bloody weekend in which Lebanese journalists and medics \u200bwere killed in Israeli strikes. UN …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3286,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270\/revisions\/3286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}