UN Security Council says UNIFIL must be protected after Israeli attacks | Israel attacks Lebanon news

The Security Council statement calls for peacekeepers to be respected, but does not mention the Israeli attacks by name.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has released a statement expressing support for UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon following a series of Israeli attacks on the UN peacekeeping force.

The United Nations Security Council statement said UNIFIL forces must be protected but did not name Israel after several days of attacks on UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon.

“She [UNSC] called on all parties to respect the safety of UNIFIL personnel and premises. They recalled that UN peacekeepers and UN premises must never be the target of attack,” said the statement released on Friday. “They reiterated their support for UNIFIL and underscored its role in supporting regional instability.”

The statement comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalates his rhetoric against UN peacekeepers, calling on them to “accept Israel’s request and temporarily move out of harm’s way.”

The Israeli government has called on UNIFIL to leave its positions in Lebanon, where Israel has stepped up ground operations and heavy bombings that have killed hundreds of people and displaced a quarter of the country’s population.

“This meeting was about the Security Council coming together to issue a statement supporting UNIFIL with one voice,” Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo reported from UN headquarters.

According to UN peacekeepers, Israeli forces have attacked their positions several times in the last week, leaving two injured after Israel attacked their headquarters twice in 48 hours. At the weekend, Israeli tanks also broke through the gates of a UNIFIL position.

Those attacks were widely condemned, including by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said in a social media post on Sunday that attacks against U.N. peacekeepers were a violation of international law and “could constitute a war crime.”

The U.N. force has said it will remain in place despite pressure from Israel to abandon its positions.

“We stay. “We are in southern Lebanon under a Security Council mandate, so it is important to maintain an international presence and keep the UN flag in the region,” a spokesman for the group said on Monday.

Elizondo reported that UNIFIL includes 10,000 peacekeepers from more than 50 countries.

He added that on Sunday the UN observed 1,557 incidents along the Blue Line, a demarcation point between Lebanese and Israeli-controlled territory, with 93 percent of those fires coming from Israel into Lebanon.

“There are some countries with a number of peacekeepers. Some in the hundreds, a few in the thousands,” Elizondo said. “So they’re watching this very closely because there are many countries that have some of their citizens involved in this operation that are now at risk, and the risks are high.”