In The Days

• Source: Reuters
• News Date: 1/8/08

EIRUT (Reuters) – Two U.N. peacekeeping soldiers were slightly wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in south Lebanon on Tuesday, a spokesman for the United Nations force said.

Distress of Nations

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the sea and the waves roaring;”
—Luke 21:25

Days of Noah

”The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
—Genesis 6:11

The spokesman did not give the nationality of the wounded soldiers. Lebanese security sources said they were Irish.

The blast smashed the windows of a white U.N. four-wheel-drive vehicle near Rmaileh village, 35 km south of Beirut and not far from the sprawling Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, a hotbed for Islamist militant groups.

It was the third attack on the 13,500-strong force known as UNIFIL since it was expanded after a 34-day war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas ended in August 2006.

Three Spanish and three Colombian U.N. soldiers were killed when a bomb destroyed their armoured troop carrier in the first attack, on June 24 last year.

In July, a bomb exploded near a UNIFIL position, causing no casualties. Lebanese authorities have charged six Palestinians, three of them in absentia, in relation to that blast.

Tuesday’s attack occurred hours after Israel said two rockets fired from Lebanon overnight had exploded in the northern border village of Shlomi, inflicting no casualties.

Israel, which came under Hezbollah rocket barrages during the 2006 war, is on high alert ahead of a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush that begins on Wednesday.

Several Palestinian militant groups have a presence in Lebanon and have at times launched attacks across the border.

UNIFIL works alongside thousands of Lebanese army troops who were deployed in the south to stabilise the border area and keep it clear of armed Hezbollah guerrillas after the war.

The bomb explosion against UNIFIL happened a day after a man claiming to be the leader of the Fatah al-Islam group threatened attacks against the Lebanese army, which crushed its fighters at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon last year.

“Nahr al-Bared camp will stand witness to your shame until the mujahideen tread your (bodies) with their shoes,” a speaker identified as Shaker al-Abssi said in an audio recording posted on a Web site used by al Qaeda and other Islamist groups.

If authenticated, the recording would be the first proof that Abssi survived the fighting, which cost over 400 lives.

Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia for the killing of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan in 2002. He was later jailed in Syria before setting up Fatah al-Islam in north Lebanon last year.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has criticised Hezbollah for allowing UNIFIL to expand its presence in the south. In a recording posted on an Islamist Web site on Dec. 29, he said the mission of the peacekeepers was to “protect the Jews”.