Three UN Troops Killed in Lebanon as Israel, Hezbollah Fight

Three United Nations peacekeeper troops have been killed in Lebanon over the past 24 hours, as fierce fighting continues between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country.

On Monday, two Indonesian peackeepers from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon were killed and two more were injured when their logistics convoy came under fire, the UN’s peacekeeping head, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said at a briefing in New York.

“The origin of the explosion has not been determined,” Lacroix said.

An Indonesian peackeeper was killed and another was injured in an earlier attack on Sunday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at the briefing.

The attacks — one on a UNIFIL position near Adchit Al Qusayr and the other near Bani Hayyan in southern Lebanon — come as Israel pursues Hezbollah militants amid the broader US and Israeli war on Iran, which has just entered its second month.

More than 1,200 people have died since Israel invaded southern Lebanon and over 1 million have been displaced. Israel and Hezbollah also fought following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that concluded in a shaky ceasefire in 2024.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned Sunday’s attack in a post on X before the other two deaths were reported. “This is just one of a number of recent incidents that have jeopardized the safety & security of peacekeepers,” he wrote.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot appeared to blame Israel for the attacks in a social media post calling for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over the “extremely serious incidents” on Monday.

“These security violations and these intimidations by soldiers of the Israeli army against UN personnel are unacceptable and unjustifiable,” Barrot wrote on X. “These condemnations were conveyed in the strongest possible terms to the Ambassador of Israel in Paris.”

The UN Security Council will discuss the attacks on UN personnel in Lebanon on Tuesday morning in New York, according to Israel’s mission to the UN.

“The responsibility for the situation in southern Lebanon lies first and foremost with Hezbollah, which continues to turn the region into a battlefield,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon said in a statement. “Israel will continue to act resolutely to protect its citizens from any threat on the northern border.”