BEIRUT(National times)- The Israeli army and the United Nations\u2019 peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said peacekeepers shot down an Israeli drone over the weekend but gave conflicting statements about the circumstances. The incident took place as Israeli strikes over Lebanon intensify amid scrambles to hold a tense ceasefire that ended Israel\u2019s war with Hezbollah last November, and mounting pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm the powerful group. Israel\u2019s latest conflict with Hezbollah began the day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. The militant group Hezbollah, largely based in southern Lebanon, began firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians. Israeli Arabic military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said Monday that while the drone was near peacekeeping forces from UNIFIL in the southeastern border town of Kfar Kila, it was conducting \u201croutine information-gathering and reconnaissance activity\u201d and did not fire at the peacekeeping troops. \u201cAfter the drone was shot down, Defense Army forces threw a hand grenade at the area where the drone was downed,\u201d Adraee said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. UNIFIL, however, in a statement Sunday said an Israeli drone had flown over a UNIFIL patrol \u201cin an aggressive manner\u201d and that \u201cpeacekeepers applied necessary defensive countermeasures to neutralize\u201d it. It said that shortly after that, an Israeli drone dropped a grenade near the peacekeeping mission and an Israeli tank fired toward them. No peacekeepers were wounded. The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops after Israel\u2019s 1978 invasion of southern Lebanon. Its mission was expanded following the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Earlier this year, the U.N. Security Council voted to end UNIFIL\u2019s mandate as of Dec. 31, 2026, at which point the force will have a year to wind down its mission and withdraw its forces and personnel.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT(National times)- The Israeli army and the United Nations\u2019 peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said peacekeepers shot down an Israeli drone over the weekend but gave conflicting statements about the circumstances. The incident took place as Israeli strikes over Lebanon intensify amid scrambles to hold a tense ceasefire that ended Israel\u2019s war with Hezbollah last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n