UN peacekeepers will pursue their mission in Lebanon despite a car bomb blast that killed six members of a Spanish battalion and wounded two, the commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) force said yesterday.
The explosion on Sunday was the first fatal attack on peacekeepers since UNIFIL's mandate was expanded last year in the wake of a devastating 34-day war between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah Shiite militia.
"It's not an attack against Lebanon and UNIFIL only, but against the stability of the region. This attack has made UNIFIL more committed to fulfil its mission in southern Lebanon," Major-General Claudio Graziano said in a statement.
Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso flew to Lebanon to collect the bodies of the soldiers killed when the bomb blew up near their armored vehicles on a road between the towns of Khiyam and Marjayoun, near the Israeli border.
He said the dead included three Colombians serving in the Spanish army.
The Lebanese army kept the road closed yesterday while investigators worked. Witnesses said UNIFIL had visibly reduced its patrols elsewhere in the south.
Alonso attended a religious ceremony for the slain soldiers at the Spanish contingent's base in Marjayoun. His helicopter earlier circled three times over the bomb scene, witnesses said.
The attack, which Hezbollah condemned, occurred even though UNIFIL had gone on higher alert after the Lebanese army began fighting Sunni Islamist militants in the north last month.
No group has claimed responsibility, but the Fatah al-Islam group battling the army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared had previously accused UNIFIL of bombarding the camp.
"We are working on the theory of a terrorist attack," Alonso said in Madrid a few hours after the bomb exploded. "In the last few weeks there have been many incidents which have destabilized Lebanon. We were on high alert and we had stepped up security."
A Lebanese security source said the car bomb was detonated by remote control as the peacekeepers' armored vehicle passed by in the Marjayoun-Khiam valley, an area about 10km from the Israeli border.
A Spanish colonel said it was a "deliberate attack."
Hezbollah was quick to condemn the bombing.
"This act of aggression is aimed at increasing insecurity in Lebanon, especially in the south of the country," it said.
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