Blast Wounds 6 Italian UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon
VOA News: Security officials in Lebanon say an explosion hit a United Nations vehicle in the southern part of the country Friday, wounding six Italian U.N. peacekeepers.
Officials said the blast apparently targeted the U.N. convoy as it was moving near the city of Sidon. The Italian government confirmed the casualties and retracted an initial report that one of the men had died.
No one has claimed responsibility for the incident.
The explosion happened on the U.N.'s International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, a day where peacekeepers commemorate their colleagues killed at U.N. missions around the world.
A U.N. peacekeeping force of about 12,000 soldiers and 1,000 civilians is deployed in southern Lebanon to monitor the border with Israel following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. There are about 120,000 peacekeepers worldwide from 115 countries.
[UNIMIL is one of the oldest peacekeeping missions in the world, with a continuous presence in Lebanon since the 1980's. It has proven completely inept at preventing multiple wars and has ceded control to Hezbollah, an illegal military organization and terrorist organization, in the South.]
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