UN chief, Ghana condemn attack on peacekeepers in Lebanon

GENEVA: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Ghana condemned on Saturday an attack a day earlier on a UN base in southern Lebanon that seriously wounded three Ghanaian UN peacekeepers. Ghana said it had lodged a formal complaint with the UN. It demanded, 'that those responsible be identified and held accountable, as the attack constitutes a grave violation of international law, amounts to a war crime and affronts the protections afforded to United Nations peacekeeping personnel'. The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, has accused Israel of targeting them, and the UN peacekeeping force has said it will investigate.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Guterres 'condemns the incident on Friday, March 6, which resulted in three Ghanaian peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) being injured inside their position in Al Qawzah, southwestern Lebanon'. 'The secretary-general underscores that the safety and security of UN personnel and property must be respected at all times, and that those responsible must be held accountable. The inviolability of UN installations must be respected by all.'
In its formal complaint to the UN, the Ghanaian government called for a 'full, immediate, impartial and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attack on personnel deployed in the service of international peace and security'. It said the officers' mess building inside the UNFIL base had been burned to the ground in the strike. On Friday, the UN demanded swift investigations into waves of fatal Israeli strikes across Lebanon. — AFP