3 UN peacekeepers injured in explosion in S. Lebanon

BEIRUT, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) — The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) announced on Sunday that three of its peacekeepers on patrol were injured in the morning when an explosion occurred near their clearly marked UN vehicle in southern Lebanon.
The UNIFIL said in its statement that it “strongly reminds all parties and actors of their responsibility to avoid harming peacekeepers and civilians.”
Lebanese military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Xinhua that a UNIFIL patrol was traveling on the road linking the town of al-Dahira and the village of Yarine when an Israeli warplane carried out an airstrike on a house in al-Dahira.
“The UNIFIL vehicle was hit by shrapnel,” the sources said, noting the three wounded have been transported to a hospital by a UNIFIL ambulance.
The sources added that Israeli drones and warplanes carried out on Sunday morning airstrikes on six towns and villages, wounding four civilians.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah announced on Sunday that it had fired Katyusha rockets at al-Sahl battalion in the Beit Hillel barracks in northern Israel, in response to the Israeli attack on the town of Shebaa earlier in the day.
An Israeli airstrike killed on Sunday morning a member of the resistance brigade which supports Hezbollah in the town of Shebaa.
Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border escalated on Oct. 8, 2023, following a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah toward Israel in solidarity with Hamas’s attack on Israel the day before. Israel then retaliated by firing heavy artillery toward southeastern Lebanon.
The situation escalated further after Israel’s attack on Dahieh in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing a senior Hezbollah military commander, Fouad Shokor, and seven civilians. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah threatened a definite and painful response to the Israeli raid at the appropriate time and place. ■