“The 27 [EU] member states agreed on asking Israelis to stop attacking UNIFIL. Many European members are participating in this mission. Their work is very important. It is completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is a mission of about 9,500 troops created to ensure peace in southern Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1978. It has accused Israel of “deliberate” attacks on peacekeepers and of crossing into Lebanon.
Clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s pro-Iran Hezbollah group have injured at least five peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, according to the UN.
UNIFIL statement:
— UNIFIL (@UNIFIL_) October 13, 2024
Early this morning, peacekeepers at a UN position in Ramyah observed three platoons of IDF soldiers crossing the Blue Line into Lebanon.
“It looks like the war will continue in Lebanon. We are asking again for a ceasefire - an immediate ceasefire on the whole region - in order to avoid a war with dramatic consequences, for all of us,” Borrell stressed.
Israeli bombardments have killed 2,255 people and injured 10,524 others in Lebanon since last October, according to data compiled by the Lebanese health ministry. Nearly a quarter of the population, 1.2 million people, has been displaced, Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in early October.
Borrell also said that humanitarian aid to Gaza is “at the lowest level since the beginning of the war” with Israel since October of last year, when Palestinian Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel, killing over 1,100 people. This prompted a full-blown Israeli response on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 42,227 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
“Famine is being used as a war arm,” Borrell lamented.
