Conflicting accounts emerge after UN peacekeepers shoot down Israeli drone

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB

BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli army and the United Nations’ 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’s war with Hezbollah last November, and mounting pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm the powerful group.

Israel’s 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 “routine information-gathering and reconnaissance activity” and did not fire at the peacekeeping troops.

“After the drone was shot down, Defense Army forces threw a hand grenade at the area where the drone was downed,” 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 “in an aggressive manner” and that “peacekeepers applied necessary defensive countermeasures to neutralize” 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’s 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’s 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.