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United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon have warned against a “catastrophic” regional conflict as Israeli forces battled Hezbollah and Hamas militants on two fronts, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
Israel has faced a fierce diplomatic backlash over .
Forty nations that contribute to UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, said Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.
Other signatories include Ghana, Nepal, Malaysia, Spain, France and China — all countries that have contributed several hundred troops to the force.
The signatories “reaffirm our full support for UNIFIL’s mission and activities, whose principal aim is to bring stabilisation and lasting peace in south Lebanon as well as in the Middle East,” the statement read.
“We urge the parties of the conflict to respect UNIFIL’s presence, which entails the obligation to guarantee the safety and security of its personnel at all times,” it added.
What does UNIFIL do?
UNIFIL, which involves about 9,500 troops of some 50 nationalities, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Its role was bolstered by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of that year, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
UNIFIL said that, in recent days, its forces have “repeatedly” come under fire in the Lebanese town of Naqura where it is headquartered, as well as in other positions.
At a summit on Friday, French, Italian and Spanish leaders said violated Resolution 1701 and must end.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told Agence France-Presse the peacekeeping mission’s work had become “very difficult because there is a lot of damage, even inside the bases”.
But he added: “There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council.”
Tenenti said he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone”.
There is “no military solution”, he said.
‘Everyone is at risk of death’
Lebanon’s health ministry said Saturday that Israeli air strikes on three sites had killed at least 15 people.
Israel had earlier told residents of south Lebanon not to return home, as its troops fought Hezbollah militants in an escalation that has killed more than 1,200 people since 23 September.
More than a million people have been forced to flee their homes, Lebanese authorities say.
Hezbollah said it had fired missiles into northern Israel, where air raid sirens sounded and the military said it had intercepted a projectile.
The Iran-backed militant group has stepped up its attacks on targets in and around Israel’s main northern city of Haifa.
Israel’s military said Hezbollah fired about 320 projectiles into Israel over the weekend of Yom Kippur, which ended at nightfall.
It also said roughly 280 “terror targets” were attacked in Lebanon and Gaza over the same period.
For the third time, Israel declared a “closed military area” along the Lebanese border in northern Israel.
Such measures since late September have preceded .
In Gaza, the IDF is besieging an area around Jabalia in the north, causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, .
“There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north — everyone is at risk of death,” Sami Asliya, 27, told Agence France-Presse.
On Friday, Gaza’s civil defence agency reported 30 people killed in Israeli strikes in the area, including on schools sheltering displaced people.
Israel has bombarded Gaza since Hamas’ October 7 attack in which more than 1,200 people, including an estimated 30 children, were killed and over 200 hostages taken, according to the Israeli government. More than 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The October 7 attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
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