A group of peacekeepers from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) withdrew from an observation post in the southern Lebanese town of Zahajra on Tuesday after coming under fire from Israeli forces, UNIFIL says.
The peacekeeping force said on Friday that its members withdrew from the post earlier this week “to avoid being shot” by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who had realised “they were being observed”.
UNFIL’s statement, posted on X, also reiterated the IDF had demanded peacekeepers vacate their positions across the Blue Line, and said Israeli soldiers had previously damaged equipment belonging to the UN force.
A separate statement said a medical facility in a UNIFIL base in Beit Leif was hit on Wednesday by a shell or rocket of unknown origin, while living accommodations and shelters were struck near Kafer Chouba, though there were no injuries in either case.
The UN mission is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation Blue Line with Israel – an area that has seen fierce clashes this month between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.
The Blue Line is the de facto Israel-Lebanon border as decided by a UN resolution ordering Israel to withdraw its troops to behind that line in 2000.
“Despite the pressure being exerted on the mission and our troop-contributing countries, peacekeepers remain in position and on task,” UNIFIL’s first statement read.
“We will continue to undertake our mandated tasks to monitor and report.”
The IDF has not yet responded.
UN peacekeepers have been deployed in the Middle East since their creation in 1948, when they were tasked with mediating conflict between Israel and its neighbours.
They have recently come into contact with Israeli forces after Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon on October 1, as part of its ongoing conflict with militant group Hezbollah.
UNIFIL forces have been engaged by the IDF in some manner at least 20 times, including an incident on October 13 when two Israeli tanks burst through the gates of a UNIFIL base, according to the UN.
Lebanon closes border crossings with Syria, as PM accuses Israel of targeting journalists
Lebanon’s two eastern border crossings with Syria are now shut, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said on Friday, after an Israeli strike earlier that morning on the Syrian side of the Al-Qaa border crossing.
Mr Hamieh said the strike had taken place at dawn and the crossing was now unusable.
The IDF confirmed on Friday that it had struck a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon. (AFP)
The IDF confirmed on Friday that it had struck a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon.
“Overnight … the IAF (air force) struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites at the Jousieh border crossing in the northern Bekaa area (of Lebanon),” the military said in a statement, claiming Hezbollah had used the border crossing to transfer weapons aided by Syrian border workers.
The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, said the strike would hinder refugees’ attempts to flee a country where a fifth of the population is already internally displaced.
The agency’s Amman-based spokesperson, Rula Amin, said she was unaware of any warning being given before the strike, which landed 500 metres from the main border crossing.
Some 430,000 people have crossed from Lebanon to Syria since the start of Israel’s military campaign, she said.
“The attacks on the border crossings are a major concern,” she said.
“They are blocking the path to safety for people fleeing conflict.”
Previous strikes earlier this month put the main Masnaa crossing out of service, leaving Lebanon’s northern border crossing as the only open route into Syria.
Strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut have continued during Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon. (AFP)
Also on Friday, Lebanon’s prime minister accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists after a strike in the country’s south killed three media workers, in what he labelled a war crime.
“The new Israeli aggression targeting journalists” was among the “war crimes committed by the Israeli enemy”, Najib Mikati said in a statement, adding the attack was “deliberate” and “aims to terrorise the media to cover up crimes and destruction”.
Lebanon’s health minister said that Israeli strikes had killed more than 160 rescuers and health workers in a year of fighting.
A total of 163 rescuers and health sector workers had been killed so far, with 272 others wounded, Firass Abiad told reporters during a press conference.
He said the attacks were “direct and intentional”.
Authorities were unable to retrieve the bodies of eight rescuers killed in Israeli attacks on their three ambulances, he said, near border villages where intense fighting has erupted following Israeli ground incursions.
“The Israeli enemy has been refusing to even allow us to retrieve the bodies … for the past two weeks,” Mr Abiad said.
Six firefighters were still buried under the rubble in another south Lebanon location, he said.
The IDF is yet to comment on the ministers’ allegations, but has previously denied targeting journalists and health workers in separate statements.
Gaza children dying as medical evacuations slow to a trickle, UNICEF report says
Also on Friday, a UN report said children in Gaza were dying in pain without emergency treatment due to Israeli authorities approving far fewer medical evacuations following the Rafah border crossing closure.
UNICEF’s James Elder told a United Nations briefing in Geneva that almost 300 children were being evacuated per month before the border crossing’s closure in May.
But that number had declined to less than one per day, with authorities waiting in vain for security approvals from Israeli authorities controlling exits from Gaza.
“As a result, children in Gaza are dying, not just from the bombs and the bullets and the shells that strike them,” he said.
“Even when miracles happen, even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount but the child survives, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza for the urgent medical care that can save their lives.”
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder in September.
Israeli authorities do not say when an application for a medical evacuation has been declined, and no explanation is given for any decision taken, he said.
Mr Elder listed a number of cases of children being refused medical evacuations, including that of Mazunia, a 12-year-old girl whose face had been blown off in a rocket strike that killed both her siblings.
A medical evacuation needed to save her life had repeatedly been denied, despite an offer to send her without her mother.
“This is a 12-year-old girl,” Mr Elder said.
“Now, I met Mazunia. She’s incredibly brave, but of course she is in immense pain and her condition is worsening.”
Mr Elder also told the story of a four-year-old girl, Ilya, who he said had been in hospital for more than 40 days with fourth-degree burns alongside her mother, who was denied an evacuation and died two days ago after her own burns became infected with fungus.
Ilya was finally approved for evacuation after her mother died, Mr Elder said, but had been given no date as to when this might happen, and doctors may soon have to amputate her hand and leg.
Mr Elder added it would take seven years to clear the backlog of children needing treatment at current rates.
“Trapped in the grip of an indifferent bureaucracy, children’s pain is brutally compounded,” he said.
A man at the site of an Israeli strike on a Khan Younis house. (Reuters: Mohammed Salem)
A number of children were among the dead after Israeli military strikes in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killed at least 38 people over Thursday night and Friday morning, Palestinian officials said.
Israeli forces also launched a night-time raid on a hospital in the north, Palestinian officials said.
“Since last night, at midnight, the occupation army tanks and bulldozers reached the hospital,” Kamal Adwan Hospital nursing director Eid Sabbah said.
“The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as they [the Israeli army] started opening fire on the hospital.”
Strikes have continued in Beit Lahiya as Israel intensifies its push into northern Gaza. (AFP)
He said when the army retreated, a delegation from the World Health Organization had arrived with an ambulance and evacuated 40 patients.
Israeli tanks returned and opened fire on the hospital — striking its oxygen stores — before raiding the building and ordering staff and patients to leave, Mr Sabbah said.
Responding to reports of the Khan Younis strike, the IDF said in a statement that “a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground” in southern Gaza.
It did not immediately comment on the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital.
A total of 72 people had been killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip since Thursday night, Palestinian officials said, while the IDF reported on Friday that three of its soldiers had died in combat in the enclave’s north.
Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip late last year was prompted by the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack in southern Israel, which killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and saw about 250 people taken hostage by Hamas.
More than 44,000 Palestinians have since died in the conflict, and more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s population has been displaced.
Jordan’s foreign minister calls for end to ‘ethnic cleansing’ in talks with Blinken
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with leaders including Mr Mikati and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in London on Friday to continue talks on de-escalating the war in the Middle East.
Jordan’s foreign minister called for pressure on Israel to end “ethnic cleansing”, in strong remarks to Mr Blinken.
“We do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop,” Mr Safadi said.
“We really stand at the brink of regional war now.”
“The only path to save the region from that is for Israel to stop the aggressions on Gaza, on Lebanon, stop unilateral measures, illegal measures, in the West Bank, that is also pushing the situation to an abyss.”
Mr Blinken saluted Jordan for its “remarkable leadership role” in the region, especially in working to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“We have a sense of real urgency in getting to a diplomatic resolution and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, such that there can be real security along the border between Israel and Lebanon,” he said.
But he stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in the region.
Mr Blinken said it was critical to “get the understandings that are necessary for the full implementation of 1701”.
“The sooner we’re able to do that, the sooner we’re able to get a resolution,” he said.
Resolution 1701, approved in 2006 after an earlier war, calls for the disarmament of non-state groups in Lebanon and a full Israeli withdrawal from the country.
ABC/wires
