Lebanese official says landmine wounded UN observers
UN peacekeepers have been deployed in south Lebanon since 1978
Beirut – An ongoing investigation by the Lebanese army has found that a landmine wounded three UN military observers and a translator in the south last week, a judicial official said Wednesday.
“Preliminary results of a Lebanese army investigation have found that the observers were wounded by a landmine,” the Lebanese official told AFP, adding that the probe was continuing and the source of the mine had yet to be determined.
“There were three mines in the area, one of which exploded,” the official added.
Earlier Wednesday, Israel’s military said it had obtained information that indicated a Hezbollah explosive charge had caused the blast.
The judicial official said a joint investigation by the Lebanese army and peacekeepers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) had yet to determine who planted the mine.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP the Iran-backed group would “certainly not respond to the Israeli accusations”, adding that the matter was in the hands of UNIFIL and the army.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti told AFP that preliminary reports showed “the explosion was not caused by direct or indirect fire”.
On Saturday, UNIFIL said that military observers from Australia, Chile and Norway and a Lebanese language assistant were wounded in the blast.
The observers from the UN Truce Supervision Organization, which supports UNIFIL, had been on a foot patrol along the so-called Blue Line, the UN-demarcated border between Israel and Lebanon, the peacekeepers said.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza.