Peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) stand at a position formerly held Iran-backed Hezbollah in the Khraibeh Valley in el-Meri in south Lebanon on August 27, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

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Beirut:

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has said in a statement that peacekeepers were injured as a rocket hit the agency’s headquarters in Naqoura, southwest of Lebanon.

“A rocket hit the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura this afternoon, causing a fire in a vehicle repair shop,” the statement said on Tuesday.

“The peacekeepers were not in shelters at the time of the incident, and while some of the soldiers sustained minor injuries, fortunately, no one was seriously injured,” it added.

“The rocket was fired from north of the UNIFIL headquarters, most likely by Hezbollah or a group affiliated with it, and we have opened an investigation into the incident,” it noted.

It continued: “We remind Hezbollah and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and that any deliberate attack on them is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and Resolution 1701.”

In recent days, five UNIFIL personnel were injured during battles between the Israeli army and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and UNIFIL accused the Israeli military of “repeatedly” firing at its positions, Xinhua news agency reported.

Hezbollah has been engaged in more intense fighting with Israel since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas last year. In early October, Israel launched a ground operation across its northern border into Lebanon.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A UN truck passes buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, on October 10, 2024 in Kafra, Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry has reported that a an Israeli airstrike overnight killed five paramedics and rescue workers in the village of Derdghaiya, Lebanon, close to the border with Israel.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday (October 13, 2024) called on the UN chief to move UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon out of “harm’s way”.

Mr. Netanyahu’s appeal to UN chief Antonio Guterres comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, refused to withdraw from the border area despite five of its members being wounded in Israeli fire in recent days.

“Mr Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately,” Netanyahu said in a video statement issued by his office, in what were his first comments on the issue.

Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a cabinet meeting, said Israeli forces had asked UNIFIL several times to leave but it had “met with repeated refusals” that provided a “human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”

“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“We regret the injuring of UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injuring. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone.”

UNIFIL has refused to leave its positions in southern Lebanon.

“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,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP in an interview on Saturday.

Mr. Tenenti said Israel had asked UNIFIL to withdraw from positions “up to five kilometres (three miles) from the Blue Line” separating both countries, but the peacekeepers refused.

That would have included its 29 positions in Lebanon’s south.

UNIFIL, a mission of about 9,500 troops of various nationalities that was created in 1978, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.

Forty nations that contribute to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon said on 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.

United Nations:

Calling for a reform of the UN Security Council, India has cautioned against its peacekeeping mandates as “not representative of current realities”.

Intelligence Bureau Director Tapan Kumar Deka said: “We call for caution on any activity that is rooted in authorisation from a Security Council that is not representative of current realities.”

In his address at the UN Chiefs of Police Summit (UNCOPS) here recently, he said that because it is responsible for maintaining international peace and security, “it is important that the Security Council is a reformed body with an expansion of membership in both the permanent and non-permanent categories”.

He pointed out the imbalance in the regional imbalance in its membership “given that more than half of the Security Council’s work is focused on Africa”.

India, he said, has been consistently calling for greater representation of Africa in line with the African Union’s two signature documents, the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration, that demand increasing the continent’s membership of the Council in the elected category and giving it at least two permanent seats.

He said that the nature of armed conflicts where peacekeepers operate changed with the involvement of “non-State Armed Groups” – diplomatic speak that includes terrorists.

Their involvement has “increasingly exposed peacekeeping operations to regional and global dynamics that undermine their efforts to implement their mandate”, he said.

Deka criticised the current peacekeeping system where the mandates from the Council are not clear, the resources given to peacekeeping operations are inadequate, and there are no definitive exit strategies for ending missions, endangering the safety of peacekeepers.

“There are divergences in interpretation of mandates between various stakeholders, which results in inadequacy of mandate delivery as well as a threat to the safety of our peacekeepers,” he said.

Deka added that it is “extremely important that there is continuous and effective coordination between the UN leadership, host nation as well as Troop/Police Contributing countries” from the drafting of the Council mandates till ending missions with an exit strategy.

The peacekeeping operations should also be given adequate resources, he said.

There were 151 Indian police in UN peacekeeping operations, while 5,384 troops were deployed, according to UN statistics.

Historically, India has been the biggest contributor of personnel to UN peacekeeping operations.

Deka, who was given a year’s extension in the top Intelligence Bureau position last month, criticised “the fallacy of solutions being imposed from outside” and said: “India has always stressed that there can be no substitute for national efforts in creating an environment where civilians are secure.”

“The eroding support of host nations to the presence of peacekeepers is a reflection of the failure to address the root causes of conflict,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)