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The European Union on Monday condemned attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and rejected Israeli allegations that the U.N. was keeping them there to obstruct military operations against Hezbollah.
Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions since Israel began a ground campaign against the Hezbollah militant group, with most blamed on Israeli forces. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”
Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah after a year of exchanges of fire, while it is also at war with Hamas in Gaza.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.
It’s been more than a year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed into army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. They are still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Here's the latest:
BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross says an Israeli airstrike in northern Lebanon has killed at least 18 people.
The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito on Monday, and was one of the northernmost strikes since Israel invaded Lebanon earlier this month.
The Hezbollah militant group is mainly present in the south of the country and the southern suburbs of Beirut.
BEIRUT — Lebanese officials say an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks.
The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.
Baalbek-Hermel Gov. Bachir Khodr, who accompanied the convoy, said the airstrike hit as it was passing through northeastern Lebanon. He shared a picture on the social platform X taken from inside a vehicle showing a large cloud of smoke on the road ahead.
It was not clear how badly the driver was wounded.
The Red Cross did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
BERLIN — The German government has sharply criticizes the shelling of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and is calling on Israel to clarify what exactly happened.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told reporters in Berlin on Monday that “all parties to the conflict, including the Israeli army, are obliged to direct their combat operations exclusively against military targets of the other party to the conflict.” Spokesman Sebastian Fischer said that a comprehensive investigation is expected and that talks on the matter were being held with the Israeli side.
The situation in southern Lebanon is causing growing concern, Fischer added, saying that “the shelling of U.N. peacekeepers and the intrusion into their bases is in no way acceptable,” and that the protection and security of U.N. troops had top priority.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran has stopped indirect talks with the United States in Oman as tensions remain high over a possible Israeli retaliatory strike on Tehran over an earlier missile attack, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister said Monday.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the comment to Iranian state media while still in Muscat, Oman. The sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula long has been an interlocutor between Iran and the U.S., particularly in the secret talks that birthed Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“For the time being, the Muscat process is stopped because of special situation in the region,” Araghchi said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. “We do not see any ground for the talks until we can pass the current crisis.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran under new President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signaling it wants to negotiate with the U.S. for sanctions relief. Since then-President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear accord, Tehran has begun enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels and increasing the size of its stockpile. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and officials insist Iran has not begun an effort to build a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, Israel has threatened a major retaliatory strike over Iran’s ballistic missile attack earlier this month, the second-such direct assault on Israel by Iran since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
BRUSSELS — Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin is accusing Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the United Nations.
Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UNIFIL peacekeepers leave their bases after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein.”
“We cannot have an undermining and a chipping away of the status or the credibility or structures of the United Nations and particularly its peacekeeping forces,” Martin said in Luxembourg, where EU foreign ministers are meeting.
“We see what’s happening in northern Gaza, for example, in terms of the necessity of eyes and ears on the ground. The world has really no full picture of what’s happening in Gaza,” he told reporters.
Martin added that “Israel is essentially now undermining (not only) the United Nations and the United Nations peacekeeping force, but the very rules based international order, and it needs to step back.”
He called on his EU counterparts “to stand up now on the side of what’s right and proper and moral in terms of humanity.”
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said Monday police had charged two Israelis on accusations that they planned to carry out an assassination at the behest of Iran.
The agency said Vladislav Victorson, 30, was approached online by a person called Mari Hossi and was instructed to carry out missions that ranged from petty vandalism to torching cars, and paid more than $5,000.
The Shin Bet said Victorson was asked to damage communications infrastructure and ATMs, although a statement did not say whether he carried out these acts. It also did not name the Israeli figure he allegedly agreed to assassinate. The Shin Bet said he also sought to acquire weapons, including a sniper’s rifle, guns and grenades. According to the Shin Bet, Victorson enlisted two other people, including his girlfriend, Anna Bernstein, 18, to assist in his missions.
The Shin Bet said Iranian agents are known to use social media and promises of cash in efforts to recruit Israelis to carry out such attacks.
Israel and Iran have a longstanding shadow war, which over the past year has erupted into direct conflict.
BRUSSELS — The European Union condemned attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and rejected allegations that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is responsible for obstructing the Israeli army.
Sixteen EU countries are contributing to the UNIFIL peacekeeping force. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.” Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions, with most blamed on Israeli forces.
Speaking in Luxembourg before chairing talks between EU foreign ministers, Borrell underlined that the U.N. Security Council decides whether UNIFIL should be moved, “so stop blaming Secretary Guterres.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah. In a video addressed to Guterres, who has been banned from entering Israel, Netanyahu told the U.N. chief “to get (UNIFIL) out of the danger zone.”
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, whose country is one of Europe’s strongest backers of Israel, said the attacks are “simply unacceptable” and that UNFIL will not be leaving.
“No, they will not withdraw. Yes, they will continue to fulfill the mandate. And yes, we demand on each and every party to respect this mandate and respect the security and safety of our blue helmets,” he told reporters.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said it has launched the second round of a polio vaccination campaign in the war-ravaged territory.
It said Monday that a second does of the vaccine will be administered to children under 10 in the central part of the territory over the next three days before the campaign is expanded to the north and south.
The campaign began last month after the territory registered its first polio case in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in one leg.
Health workers succeeded in administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 560,000 children despite myriad challenges, including ongoing fighting, the breakdown of law and order and widespread damage to roads and infrastructure.
The World Health Organization said humanitarian pauses to facilitate the campaign last month were largely observed.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — “It is totally, utterly unacceptable for Israel to be targeting U.N. Peacekeepers,” New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters in the capital on Monday.
“I think the whole world is outraged that Israel is targeting U.N. facilities. They are there on a peacekeeping mission to try and keep the peace on that border,” he said.