now the last time fighting between Lebanon and Israel was this sustained was 2006 since then the presence of a un peacekeeping Force the United Nations interim force in Lebanon has been enhanced but now that force is expressing concern over the safety of its peacekeepers because of actions by the Israeli Army around its positions it's saying the Israeli military has been repeatedly informed of this ongoing situation through regular channels this is an extremely dangerous development it is unacceptable to compromise the safety of un peacekeepers carrying out their security Council mandated tasks while joining us now on
Al jazer is Andrea tenti who's a spokesperson for the United Nations entering force in Lebanon is live from Beirut Mr tenti thank you for being with us is the Safety and Security of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon at risk today yes the situation is as we said deeply concerning and definitely the the security and safety uh of our troops is uh is of Paramount importance and is is at risk because we have been uh seeing in recent days heavy shelling throughout the air of operations and of course as you mentioned earlier the the the fact that
IDF troops have moved very close to our uh position uh close to the Irish contingent at the moment is also a concern because the shelling and exchanges of fire with is isbah is ongoing and and we are in the middle of this uh exchanges of fire so it's definitely concerning definitely also concerning the fact that we were told to move from certain positions along the blue line but we are staying we want the UN flag to fly in all this position close to the Blue Line have you been able to confirm Mr tenti if Israeli
incursions have happened and if they have what what areas are troops inside Lebanon right yeah yes through our of course very limited at the moment monitoring capabilities uh we have seen uh incursions or limited incursions inside Lebanese uh uh territory and this was something that they told us several days ago that they would have started so there are these incursions inside inside Lebanon uh but uh uh we are still trying to monitor the development of this as we said in the immediately after that that's a a a violation of Lebanese sovereignity and also violation of
resolution 1701 and of course uh the recent days have been very heavy in terms of exchanges of fire and shelling you say you've had limited capabili since the start of the Israeli air and then the ground campaign has unifil been able to carry out its mandate its Mission and Carry Out Patrols in the area we tried at the best of our ability right now of course we still have the head of mission and Force Commander General Lazaro who is still keeping this channel of communications open with the parties to try to deescalate uh the situations
and decrease the tensions what is needed now is of course also the issue of humanitarian uh assistance to to the local population that we are ready to to support but it's important to ensure the safety of our troops and of course there are un agencies on the ground also ready to assist and to help there are thousands of people stuck in villages with no food or water so it's important that this uh humanitarian Convoy should be allowed uh during this specific during these days you talk about thousands of people still believe to be south of
the Lani River I understand people stuck um which areas are people haven't been able to leave and what sort of help are they getting are you helping with evacuating them it's very difficult it's very difficult to do that because of the increasing uh in tension and shelling so it's very difficult for us to to give that kind of of support in these days there are people all around the are of operations as you know most of the population has left the south of Lebanon I think over 350,000 uh and the population in the south is
around 500,000 so a lot of people have left but a lot of people do not know where to go so you have population still in several part of the of UN filo operation in the south of Lebanon from the East to the West so we still a a a a main concern and and assistance to these people should be a Paramount for for everyone is how different is this conflict from the one in 2006 and are the rules of War being respected very different 2006 of course was uh not as lethal as it is now
also the use of weapons that were used in 2006 was different from the weapons that they used in 2024 uh the conflict right now is is not only isbah and and and Israel is much wider with the potential to become a wider conflict and a regional conflict so and this has been going on for 12 months the conflict in 2006 was 34 days 1,000 people were killed now in the last few weeks over 1,200 people were killed adding to the other people that were killed before over 2,000 so it's very dramatic thank you so much
for talking to us Andrea tenti spokesperson for the United Nations intering force in Lebanon thank you for your time thank you make sure to subscribe to our channel to get the latest news from aler
