Two U.N. peacekeepers traveling in a convoy were killed when it was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin” in southern Lebanon on Monday and several other peacekeepers were injured, according to a U.N. report seen by The New York Times.
The blast came a day after the organization’s secretary-general, António Guterres, condemned the killing of an Indonesian member of the peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group, are engaged in escalating clashes as Israeli forces expand their ground invasion there.
About 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are stationed in the region as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which was established in 1978 during Lebanon’s civil war.
The internal report seen by The Times indicated that the U.N. peacekeeping force did not immediately know who was responsible for the latest strike and deaths. There was no immediate comment from Israel, Hezbollah or UNIFIL. The other strike was also being investigated, UNIFIL said in a statement.
In the latest explosion on Monday, a U.N. convoy that was heading between two UNIFIL bases was struck, destroying the lead vehicle and killing the peacekeepers. Several others were injured, one of them seriously, according to the report. The explosion, which again affected UNIFIL’s Indonesian battalion, occurred near the southern Lebanese town of Bani Haiyyan, the report said.
The three deaths over the past 24 hours were the first in a combat incident since a conflict that was sparked when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in 2023 in support of its Palestinian ally in Gaza, Hamas.
That war ended in a fragile cease-fire, but erupted again this month after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Tehran, opening a new front in the broader U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Israel has responded with a large-scale bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced well over a million others, according to Lebanese authorities.
Hezbollah has responded by attacking Israeli troops as they advance into southern Lebanon and keeping up rocket fire across the border into Israel, in a conflict that shows little sign of abating.
Euan Ward is a Times reporter covering Lebanon and Syria. He is based in Beirut.
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