{"id":178040,"date":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/178040\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T15:05:07","slug":"six-arrests-after-attack-on-irish-unifil-peacekeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/178040\/","title":{"rendered":"Six arrests after attack on Irish UNIFIL peacekeepers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lebanese army has arrested six people after gunmen attacked Irish UN peacekeepers patrolling in the south of the country, the Lebanese military has said.<\/p>\n

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), had reported that six men riding on three mopeds opened fire on a patrol vehicle on Thursday without injuring anyone.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Irish Defence Forces confirmed that its personnel had come under “small arms fire” in south Lebanon.<\/a><\/p>\n

“All our personnel are well and accounted for,” a Defence Forces spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said the 127th Infantry Battalion, which is part of UNIFIL in the south of the country, “initiated immediate action drills” after it came under fire.<\/p>\n

The Defence Forces said the battalion’s actions and the armoured vehicles they were in “ensured the safety of all troops”.<\/p>\n

It added that the battalion returned to Camp Shamrock following the patrol.<\/p>\n

In a statement today, the Defence Forces said it welcomed the Lebanese Army’s statement on the arrests, adding that it will assist them with any subsequent investigations.<\/p>\n

“\u00d3glaigh na h\u00c9ireann deeply condemns any acts of violence or aggression against all United Nations peacekeepers implementing UN Security Council resolution 1701 in Southern Lebanon,” the Defence Forces spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The Lebanese Army said its army’s intelligence directorate had followed up on the attack and arrested six Lebanese suspects.<\/p>\n

The army said it would not tolerate attacks on UNIFIL, which it said carries out an important stabilising role south of the Litani river, near the Israeli border.<\/p>\n

UNIFIL said the peacekeepers were on patrol when they were approached by six men on three mopeds at 6pm yesterday near Bint Jbeil.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThe Irish Defence Forces said all its personnel are well and accounted for following the attack (file image)<\/p>\n

One of the men, it said, fired “approximately three shots into the back of the vehicle”.<\/p>\n

Both UNIFIL and the Defence Forces condemned the incident.<\/p>\n

UNIFIL is Ireland’s longest peacekeeping mission.<\/p>\n

UNIFIL peacekeepers have been tasked with acting as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon since March 1978, and with monitoring the November 2024 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

The truce was supposed to see Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon and refrain from attacks while the Iran-backed group is disarmed.<\/p>\n

But Hezbollah is resisting those efforts, and in recent weeks Israel has stepped up its ongoing strikes, accusing the group of trying to build its forces.<\/p>\n

UNIFIL has also recently complained of Israeli forces firing at or near its peacekeepers.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, direct discussions were held for the first time in decades between Israeli and Lebanese civilian officials under the auspices of a ceasefire monitoring mechanism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lebanese army has arrested six people after gunmen attacked Irish UN peacekeepers patrolling in the south of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-178040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}