BEIRUT
\nA United Nations peacekeeper has been killed in Lebanon, the force and Serbian authorities said Thursday, after a base was hit in the south where Israel and Hezbollah are fighting. The death brings to seven the number of UNIFIL peacekeepers killed since the latest conflict erupted in March.
\n\u201cA UNIFIL peacekeeper died early this morning from critical injuries sustained when mortar shells struck his position,\u201d a statement from the force said, adding that two other Blue Helmets were wounded in the incident on Wednesday night.
\nIt said a probe had been launched and also urged \u201crelevant national authorities to investigate the incident.\u201d
\nSerbia\u2019s defense ministry said in a statement that \u201cSenior Sergeant Milovan Jovanovic was given emergency medical care at a hospital inside the base after being wounded and then transported by helicopter to the University Medical Center in Beirut, where he died.\u201dAccording to UNIFIL, around 170 Serbian peacekeepers are among the 7,500-strong force, whose personnel come from nearly 50 countries.
\nPeacekeepers are deployed in south Lebanon near the Blue Line, the 120-kilometer (75-mile) de facto border between Lebanon and Israel, where they are in the middle of the fighting. \u201cUNIFIL has detected an increasingly high number of trajectories and impacts in south Lebanon,\u201d the force\u2019s statement said, adding that \u201cthe violence must end.\u201d
\nIn late March, an Indonesian peacekeeper was killed and another later died of his wounds after a projectile hit their base, with a preliminary UN investigation blaming an Israeli tank shell. Shortly after, two more Indonesian Blue Helmets were killed by an improvised explosive device, which the same UN investigation found was likely planted by Hezbollah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT A United Nations peacekeeper has been killed in Lebanon, the force and Serbian authorities said Thursday, after a base was hit in the south where Israel and Hezbollah are fighting. The death brings to seven the number of UNIFIL peacekeepers killed since the latest conflict erupted in March. \u201cA UNIFIL peacekeeper died early this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"\n