Officials: Blast kills 4 peacekeepers in Lebanon

06/24/2007

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- A bomb apparently targeting U.N. peacekeepers exploded by the side of a road in southern Lebanon on Sunday, killing four Spanish troops and injuring at least four, a senior Lebanese security official said.

The senior official in Beirut said a mine may have caused the explosion, but another security official based in southern Lebanon said a bomb detonated at the side of a road about four miles north of the Israeli border town of Metulla. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, confirmed the explosion and said there were casualties but gave no details.

In Madrid, the Spanish Defense Ministry confirmed at least two Spanish peacekeepers were killed and five injured.

First attack against peacekeepers

Sunday's deadly explosion was the first time that UNIFIL has come under attack since it was reinforced last summer after the war between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israeli forces in Lebanon. The 13,000-member U.N. force from 30 countries along with 15,000 Lebanese troops patrols a zone along Lebanese-Israeli border.

In a statement on its television station Al-Manar, Hezbollah denounced the attack, calling it a "suspicious act." The militant group has had good relations with UNIFIL since the troops were first deployed in Lebanon in 1978.

There have been warnings that the peacekeepers could come under terror attacks, particularly from al-Qaida and its sympathizers.

Media reports earlier this month said interrogations by Lebanese authorities with captured militants revealed plots to attack the force.

Those warnings became more serious after Fatah Islam, an Islamic militant group, began fighting Lebanese troops in a northern Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp five weeks ago. The militants have threatened to take their battle outside northern Lebanon and other militant groups have issued Internet statements supporting Fatah Islam.

Earlier Sunday, the state-run National News Agency said the Spanish battalion had organized a celebration in its headquarters in Ibl el-Saqi near Marjayoun to mark the anniversary of St. John the Baptist — the patron saint of King Juan Carlos. The celebration was attended by UNIFIL commander, Gen. Claudio Graziano of Italy.

Southern Lebanon has been largely quiet after the summer war that killed more than 1,200 people, most of them in Lebanon.

Rockets were fired on Israel a week ago, causing damage but no casualties in an attack that was blamed on radical Palestinians or sympathizers with Fatah Islam.

Increasing instability

The attack on the peacekeepers comes amid growing instability in Lebanon.

Along with the northern fighting and the southern rocket attack, about a half dozen bombs have exploded in residential neighborhoods in the Beirut area since the Fatah Islam-army fighting erupted May 20. One of the Beirut bombs killed a prominent anti-Syrian member of the country's Parliament.

On Sunday, Lebanese troops raided an apartment complex suspected of housing Islamic militants in the northern port city of Tripoli, sparking a gunbattle that left 10 people dead, including a soldier and six gunmen, security officials said.

The fighting marked a new escalation in the army's battle with Islamic militants, as the fighting shifted from the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared on Tripoli's outskirts back to the city itself.

A soldier, a policeman and two family members were killed in Sunday's confrontation, the security officials said, speaking to The AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. They said six of the gunmen were also killed — three Saudis, an ethnic Chechen and two Lebanese who also held European citizenship.

According to the officials, at least two of the militants had been living there for some time. Others took refuge there with them on Saturday.

Before Sunday's gunbattle, Tripoli had not seen fighting since the first week of the conflict with Fatah Islam militants at Nahr el-Bared, Lebanon's worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war.