The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon has reported new blasts at its headquarters which injured two Sri Lankan members of the force, a day after the same base came under Israeli tank fire.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said the explosions on Friday hit the base in Naqoura near an observation tower, but did not specify the source of the attack. It said in a statement that one of the wounded peacekeepers had been taken to hospital in the southern coastal town of Tyre, while the second was treated at the Naqoura base.
Unifil also said an Israeli military bulldozer had destroyed part of the concrete perimeter of one of its observation positions on the Israeli-Lebanese boundary as tanks moved alongside, and that it had sent a reaction force to reinforce the position.
The shelling of UN positions has come as the conflict, which began a year ago in Gaza, continues to spread unabated. Overnight Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut killed 22 people when they hit a densely populated residential neighbourhood of apartment blocks and small shops in the heart of the Lebanese capital.
In Gaza, dozens of Palestinians were reported to have been injured when an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) quadcopter drone opened fire on a school sheltering displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Friday that at least 42,126 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli military in the territory since the war started a year ago, 61 of them in the most recent 24-hour period. The conflict was triggered on 7 October by a Hamas raid into southern Israel, in which its militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostage.
The Unifil statement issued on Friday pointed out that the UN security council had sent peacekeepers to Lebanon in 2006 as part of arrangements that ended the last Israel-Hezbollah war, and the multilateral force had now been exposed to “very serious risks”.
Two Indonesian Unifil peacekeepers were lightly wounded on Thursday when they were thrown from an observation tower that was hit by an Israeli tank round, and two other Unifil outposts had come under fire.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said he had told Israel that attacks on the peacekeeping force were intolerable.
Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said on Friday that the force was looking into the cases of UN peacekeepers being “inadvertently hurt during IDF combat against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon”.
“The IDF expresses deep concern over incidents of this kind and is currently conducting a thorough review at the highest levels of command to determine the details,” he said.
Unifil’s spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said the attacks on the UN bases had impaired the peacekeepers’ ability to monitor the conflict in southern Lebanon and ground incursions by IDF units.
“We have not been able to monitor the area as much as we want to, because for the safety and security of our troops it’s important to stay inside the bases,” he told CNN in India.
He said that 350,000 of the 500,000 people who live in southern Lebanon had fled their homes since the fighting ignited.
“Some of them are still in the south, stuck in certain villages. We’re trying to do whatever we can to assist and to provide humanitarian assistance,” Tenenti said. “But the security concerns are very high and it has not been very easy to reach all these areas.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head the UN relief organisation for Palestinian refugees across the region (Unrwa), said people in Gaza had become accustomed to being moved about “like pinballs” by IDF operations. He feared that the people of southern Lebanon were facing the same plight.
“One of the fears is that we replicate a situation similar to the one we have seen until now in Gaza,” he said.
The Israeli shelling of UN positions marks the culmination of a downward spiral of Israel’s relations with the international body. The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, declared Guterres persona non grata earlier this month, accusing him of “lending support to terrorists” after the secretary general’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking at an Asian summit in Laos on Friday, Guterres said the spread of the Middle East conflict would have dramatic effects on the whole world.
“I have never seen in my time as secretary general any example of death and destruction as dramatic as what we are witnessing here,” he said. “We are seeing escalation after escalation, a regionalisation of the conflict that is becoming a threat to global peace and security. We see an enormous tragedy in Lebanon. And we must do everything to avoid an all-out war.”
The incidents at Unifil positions drew outrage from countries who contribute soldiers to serve as peacekeepers in its ranks.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, condemned the attacks and called on the international community to stop selling weapons to Israel. The French foreign ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador over an incident in which Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by UN peacekeepers.
Human Rights Watch called for the UN to set up a formal inquiry into Israeli attacks on Unifil peacekeepers, pointing out they could violate the laws of war.