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Three United Nations peacekeepers from Indonesia were killed in two separate incidents in southern Lebanon after a bloody weekend in which Lebanese journalists and medics were killed in Israeli strikes. Two peacekeepers were killed on Monday after an explosion from an unknown origin destroyed their vehicle near Bani Hayyan in south Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL said in a statement. Two other soldiers were wounded in the blast.
Another Indonesian soldier was killed overnight 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.
The death on Sunday was the first among the UN’s peacekeeping force in the new war between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which erupted on March 2.
“These are two separate incidents, and we are investigating them as two separate incidents,” said UNIFIL’s spokesperson Kandice Ardiel. In response to the first death, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said on Monday the deceased peacekeeper was one of its citizens and that three others were injured by “indirect artillery fire”. Indonesia condemned “in the strongest terms” the second attack, its foreign ministry said on Tuesday. “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 United Nations peacekeepers at grave risk,” it said.
