UN chief: Israeli attacks on UNIFIL 'may constitute a war crime'
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned recent Israeli attacks on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon that left several peacekeepers injured.
On Sunday, the spokesman for the UN chief quoted Guterres as saying that the Israeli attacks “may constitute a war crime.”
"UNIFIL personnel and its premises must never be targeted," Stephane Dujarric said, referring to the blue-helmet international force. "Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law...(and) may constitute a war crime."
"In a deeply worrying incident that occurred today, the entrance door of a UN position was deliberately breached by [the Israeli military] armored vehicles," he added in a statement.
Dujarric added that UNIFIL personnel and its premises must never be targeted.
UNIFIL said the regime’s forces had "deliberately" fired shots at its headquarters in the town of Naqoura in recent days.
He urged all parties, including the Israeli military to refrain from any action that put UN peacekeepers at risk.
At least five peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days in southern Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Guterres to relocate peacekeepers from southern Lebanon.
The UN chief strongly condemns attacks on peacekeepers in southern Lebanon as a violation of international law and a war crime.
Earlier on Sunday, 40 countries contributing to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s attacks on peacekeepers.
"Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated," said the countries in a joint statement posted on X by the Polish UN mission on Sunday.
The contributing nations reaffirm their “full support for UNIFIL's mission and activities, whose principal aim is to bring stabilization and lasting peace in South Lebanon and the Middle East.”
UNIFIL is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah. It was first established as an interim force in 1978 to confirm Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.
The mission now involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities.
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