An Australian Defence Force member was seriously injured in an explosion on Saturday in southern Lebanon while on a peacekeeping mission, the Defence Department has confirmed.
However, their life is not at risk and they have been transported to a health centre at a nearby military base for treatment and has since been released to recover.
The soldier was part of a peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities between Lebanon and Israel. It is part of Operation Paladin, under which Australia helps support the U.N. organisation that monitors truces across Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
The Australian, who was with two U.N. military observers and a Lebanese translator, was undertaking a routine patrol to monitor activity near the Israeli-Lebanon border. A fifth person who remained with the vehicle was uninjured.
While the Defence Department doesn’t release specific details about such events, it is known that Hezbollah has been trading fire with the Israeli military across the demarcation line between the two countries—known as the Blue Line—since October, in parallel with the war in Gaza. AAP described the incident that injured the four people as a “shelling.”
Both UNIFIL and U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres have spoken out against the attack, condemning the targeting of peacekeepers as unacceptable.
UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said an investigation is underway to discover who was responsible.
“Safety and security of U.N. personnel must be guaranteed,” he said.
Although it has been using drones to strike at targets in the area, Israel was quick to respond to accusations, such as those in Arabic media outlet The Cradle, saying it had deliberately targeted the patrol.
“Contrary to the reports, the IDF did not strike a @UNIFIL_ vehicle in the area of Rmeish this morning,” they said on X (formerly Twitter).
Reuters also reported that “two security sources” said the observers were wounded in an Israeli strike.
If Israel is indeed responsible, this would be the second strike it made on U.N. peacekeepers in four months, after a UNIFIL patrol was hit by Israeli army gunfire in the vicinity of Aitarun.
