Serious international incident in southern Lebanon: the Israeli armed forces opened fire on the Unifil headquarters in Naqoura, wounding two peacekeepers, and the other two positions in Labbouneh and Ras Naqoura which host the Italian contingent. Harsh condemnation of the UN mission, which underlined that “any deliberate attack on peacekeeping forces is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and Security Council Resolution 1701”. “We remind the IDF and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and protection of United Nations personnel and property and to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times,” added UNIFIL, before send back to the sender, through a spokesperson heard from the Walla website, the Israeli request to evacuate the positions along the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Italy also “firmly protested”, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto speaking with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant and summoning the ambassador of the Jewish state to Rome. “This is not an error, it is not an accident – he later said in a press conference – the repeated hostile acts of the Israeli Forces against the 1.31 base could constitute war crimes and are certainly very serious violations of international law”. “These incidents are intolerable and must be carefully and decisively avoided,” he added.
According to Crosetto «the situation in that area of Lebanon worries us not from today, but what happened yesterday and today is totally unacceptable: there is no justification that Israel had warned in advance that some bases had to be left: the United Nations and the countries Unifil members cannot take orders from Israel.” Crosetto says he is certain that «it is not a mistake and it is not an accident, which is why it is not enough for us that there were no serious injuries: we need to have formal explanations as soon as possible. The ambassador was not able to provide all the requested elements, and therefore we are waiting for explanations.”
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her personal and Government’s strong closeness to our soldiers currently engaged in Lebanon as part of the UN mission and the bilateral Mibil mission. Meloni recalled that the Italians continue to provide invaluable work for the stabilization of the area, in compliance with the United Nations mandate. The Government, in confirming the fundamental role of Unifil in southern Lebanon, continues to work towards the cessation of hostilities and the de-escalation of the region. Crosetto, asked about the possibility of rethinking the Unifil mission in light of what has happened in recent hours, underlined that «the choice to remain in Lebanon or not is not up to us but up to the UN: the UN must not be weakened, it must if anything helped to become stronger, because today it is needed in Lebanon, soon I hope it will be needed in Gaza, in Ukraine…”.
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