LEBANON: Italian peace force starts landing in Lebanon

Record ID: 349301

  • Title: LEBANON: Italian peace force starts landing in Lebanon
  • Date: 3rd September 2006
  • Summary: WOMEN AND CHILDREN WAVING ON BALCONY LOOKING DOWN ON UN MILITARY VEHICLES DRIVING ALONG ROAD
  • Embargoed: 18th September 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVADSKSVHJNLO3C4HMCTMPVVZ7K8
  • Story Text: More than 250 Italian troops landed in south Lebanon on Saturday (September 2), forming the advance party of Italy's contingent to an expanded U.N. force set up to keep the peace between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.
    The marines, armed with automatic rifles and wearing blue U.N. berets, came ashore in the port of Tyre in helicopters and rubber dinghies from the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, the flagship of the Italian fleet.
    An Italian navy spokesman said some 800 had arrived in Lebanese waters out of a total of about 3,000 that Italy has pledged. The rest of the 800 will land later on Saturday and Sunday depending on sea conditions, he added.
    Italian ships simultaneously unloaded military vehicles at the small U.N. port at Naqoura, about 20 km (12 miles) south of Tyre. Then Italian troops transported the military vehicles to Tyre by road.
    Later on Saturday, children gave a warm welcome to the Italians as they drove through the streets of Tyre on their way to a village which will serve as their temporary base before they take their positions on the border.
    The Italians will make up the largest single contingent to the new force, known as UNIFIL II, which will deploy along the Israeli-Lebanese border after a one-month war between Israel and Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla movement.
    A truce came into effect on Aug. 14 and has held with few violations other than flights over Lebanon by Israeli planes, defying widespread expectations of intermittent violence.
    The U.N. Security Council fixed the target size of the force at 15,000 and the United Nations has already recruited more than half that number. Italy is expected to contribute 3,000, France 2,000 and Spain more than 1,000. Poland, Indonesia and Belgium have also said they are willing to take part.
    The French commander of UNIFIL, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, told reporters in Tyre that he expected to have the 5,000 troops on the ground within two weeks.
    He already has some 2,000 troops from the old UNIFIL force, which has been in south Lebanon since Israel's first major incursion in 1978, at that time against Palestinian guerrillas.
    Despite Israeli demands, the U.N. force has no plans to deploy along the nearby Syrian-Lebanese border to prevent arms smuggling to Hizbollah through Syria.
    The U.N. truce resolution gives the Lebanese government the final word on whether the force should monitor the Syrian border and Beirut has said that it has no plans to make such a request.
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