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US President Joe Biden has said he is “absolutely, positively” urging Israel to stop firing at UN peacekeepers during its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, following two incidents in 48 hours.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops were responsible for an incident in which two Sri Lankan soldiers for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) were injured.
IDF soldiers operating around the Unifil base in Naqoura identified a threat and opened fire, the Israeli army said, adding that the incident would be investigated “at the highest levels”.
On Thursday, two Indonesian Unifil soldiers were injured falling from an observation tower after an Israeli tank fired towards it.
The leaders of France, Italy, and Spain issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s actions, saying they were unjustifiable and should immediately come to an end.
Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemns” the IDF attack which injured two of its soldiers.
The head of UN peacekeeping said there was reason to believe some firing on UN positions in southern Lebanon had been direct, though he did not ascribe responsibility for the incidents.
“For example, we have a case where a tower was hit by fire and also damages to cameras at one of the positions – which obviously to us very much looked like direct fire,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix told the BBC’s Newshour programme.
As Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon continues, the IDF and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah continued to fire missiles and rockets across the Israel-Lebanon border.
The IDF said it had detected about 100 rockets crossing into northern Israel from Lebanon within the space of half an hour on Friday. One of two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) detected crossing from Lebanon was intercepted, the IDF claimed.
The Lebanese ministry of health reported that three people, including a two-year-old girl, were killed in an Israeli raid on the city of Sidon in southern Lebanon. Two Lebanese soldiers were killed after Israeli forces targeted an army post in the town of Kafra in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese army.
In the capital, Beirut, emergency workers continued to comb through the wreckage of buildings hit by two Israeli air strikes on Thursday.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attacks came with no warning and killed 22 people, all civilians, and injured another 117. Israel has not commented.
Israeli forces launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon last month as they escalated their response to rocket fire from Hezbollah.
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading near-daily cross-border fire since October, when the Palestinian armed group Hamas in the Gaza Strip carried out a deadly attack in southern Israel.
The IDF indicated that the UN post struck in Naqoura on Friday was about 164ft (50m) away from the source of the threat identified by soldiers. It stated it had told peacekeeping troops to stay in protected spaces at the time.
Unifil reported that Israeli military vehicles had knocked over barriers at another UN site in Labbouneh, closer to the border with Israel.
The incidents represented a “serious development”, it said.
Mikati stated Friday’s attack was “a crime directed at the international community”.
EPA
Israel argues that Unifil has failed to stabilise the region and has asked peacekeepers to withdraw northwards so it can confront Hezbollah.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, reiterated Israel’s call for Unifil personnel to withdraw north by 5km (3 miles) to “avoid danger,” but UN’s Jean-Pierre Lacroix said they would remain in position.
About 10,000 peacekeepers from 50 countries are stationed in Lebanon, alongside around 800 civilian staff.
Since 1978, they have patrolled the area between the Litani River and the UN-recognised boundary between Lebanon and Israel, known as the “Blue Line”.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on 8 October last year, the day after Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel. The Iran-backed group says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians and has said it will stop firing if there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Over the past three weeks, Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Hezbollah, intensifying air strikes against southern Lebanon and southern parts of Beirut, and launching a ground invasion.
Lebanon reports over 2,000 fatalities, primarily in the recent escalation, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. This week, Hezbollah rocket fire has reportedly killed two Israeli civilians and a Thai national, according to Israeli authorities.
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In a separate development on Friday, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency was reported by the AFP news agency to have stated at least 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes in the Jabalia town and refugee camp in the northern Palestinian enclave.
The IDF has not commented on the issue.
Meanwhile, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) indicated that “thousands are trapped” in the Jabalia refugee camp, including five of its staff.
MSF reported that Israeli forces had issued evacuation orders on 7 October in Jabalia, “while carrying out attacks at the same time”, meaning people could not leave safely.
Dr Mohammed Salha, the acting director of the al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, informed the BBC’s Newshour programme that the area had been under siege for seven days.
He warned that the hospital would run out of fuel on Saturday, as Israeli forces were “cutting Jabalia from the rest of Gaza”.
“No medication, no medical supplies, no healthy water, no fuel, so pressure, pressure on these people to move and go directly to the south,” Dr Salha conveyed.
Israel has been conducting a new ground operation in the area, claiming it is targeting regrouping Hamas fighters who aim to launch attacks, with dozens reportedly killed or wounded in northern Gaza in recent days.