LEBANON: UN force pays tribute to Spanish soldiers killed in car bomb attack

Record ID: 349358

  • Title: LEBANON: UN force pays tribute to Spanish soldiers killed in car bomb attack
  • Date: 26th June 2007
  • Summary: MARCHING BAND PEACEKEEPERS PAYING TRIBUTE
  • Embargoed: 11th July 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVACIEI0OANKB3HRLG89WLXUT7MC
  • Story Text: UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon pay tribute to six Spanish soldiers killed in car bomb attack on Sunday. The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon paid tribute on Monday (June 25) to six of their troops killed in a car bomb while on patrol on Sunday.
    The ceremony for the six Spanish peacekeepers, attended by Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso and U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Commander Major-General Claudio Graziano, was held at the Spanish UNIFIL base in the southern village of Marjayoun.
    The attack on a Spanish patrol on Sunday was the first deadly assault on the U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon since last year's war between Israel and Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran and Syria.
    The UNIFIL said it will pursue their mission in south Lebanon despite the car bomb, believed to be either detonated by a remote control or a suicide driver.
    The bombing presents another challenge to the Western-backed Beirut government, locked in a paralysing political conflict with the Hezbollah-led opposition and shaken by a series of bombings, as well as battles with al Qaeda-inspired militants.
    The bombing, which Hezbollah condemned, occurred even though UNIFIL had gone on higher alert after the Lebanese army began fighting Sunni Islamist militants in the north last month.
    No group has claimed responsibility, but the Fatah al-Islam group battling the army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared had threatened UNIFIL earlier this month.
    UNIFIL, operating alongside about 15,000 Lebanese troops sent to the south after the July-August war ended, has reported few problems with Hezbollah, which keeps its arms out of sight.
    It has seen Sunni militants as a greater peril since al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri threatened attacks last year.
    In Beirut, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's anti-Syrian cabinet decided to ask the U.N. Security Council to prolong UNIFIL's mandate, which expires in August, for another year.
    UNIFIL has now suffered 266 fatalities since it was set up after a 1978 Israeli invasion.
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