UN, France slam Israel after attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon
The United Nations and France have condemned an Israeli attack near UN peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon after international soldiers neutralised an “aggressive” Israeli reconnaissance drone.
Known as UNIFIL, the UN force works with the Lebanese army to enforce the ceasefire that ended more than a year of war between Hezbollah and Israel. Despite the truce, Israel continues to launch attacks.
“We are very concerned about the incident that occurred on Sunday in which an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the vicinity of a UNIFIL patrol, and subsequently an Israeli tank fired a shot at the peacekeepers in Kfar Kila in the UNIFIL area of operations,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
“Our colleagues at UNIFIL are in touch with the [Israeli army] to protest vehemently what has happened. It’s not the first time that we feel we’ve been targeted in different ways … [including] pointing lasers or warning shots. It’s very, very dangerous,” he added.
According to a French diplomatic source, the UNIFIL troops involved in Sunday’s incident were French.
“France condemns the Israeli fire that targeted a UNIFIL detachment on October 26, 2025,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “These incidents follow those observed on October 1, 2, and 11, when the Israeli army had already targeted UNIFIL positions.”
Makes you wonder what will happen when Unifil leaves Lebanon in 13 months.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/29/un-unifil-lebanon-peacekeeping-mission-withdrawal
The UN security council has voted to extend the body’s peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for a further 16 months, but ordered it finished at the end of 2026 under Israeli and US pressure.
Israel can't wait to get rid of neutral observers.
Lebanon says 2 killed in Israeli attack on the south
Two brothers were killed in an Israeli air strike on southern Lebanon, bringing the total death toll from such attacks to 13 over the past week.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said in a statement the two brothers were killed in Israeli bombing of the village of al-Bayyad in the Tyre district. Lebanese official news agency ANI said the two were killed in an attack on a sawmill in al-Bayyad.
Meanwhile, an Israeli army spokesperson said it “eliminated two terrorists from the Hezbollah terrorist organisation while they were working to restore a terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon”.
Israel’s air force has stepped up bombings saying it’s striking members of Hezbollah and its infrastructure despite an ongoing truce in Lebanon reached in November 2024. Lebanese leaders have accused Israel of attempting to prevent reconstruction of the region, devastated by last year’s war, by targeting the machinery including diggers and bulldozers.
