The Irish Armed Forces announced Wednesday that the ‘blue helmet’ wounded last week in an attack on a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) convoy will be evacuated during the day to the European country for further medical treatment.
«The Irish Armed Forces can confirm that Shane Kearney will be medically evacuated today from Beirut airport to Casement airfield, Baldonnel, with a specially equipped medical aircraft,» they said.
Thus, they have detailed in a message on their account on the social network Twitter that the ‘blue helmet’ «will subsequently be transferred by ambulance to Beaumont Hospital for further treatment», without giving further details about his health condition.
The acting Prime Minister of Lebanon, Nayib Mikati, promised last week to «punish» those responsible for the death on Wednesday of a UNIFIL ‘blue helmet’ in the aforementioned attack, perpetrated in the town of Al Aqbiya (south) when unidentified persons fired shots with small arms against two armored vehicles carrying eight military personnel.
Uafiq Safa, in charge of coordination of the Shiite militia-party Hezbollah, said that the event was not «intentional» and disassociated the group from what happened. He also expressed his condolences to UNIFIL and asked for an investigation into the incident.
UNIFIL was deployed in the country in 1978 and restored after the 2006 conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militia-party Hezbollah, which lasted just over a month and resulted in the death of some 1,200 people in Lebanon -most of them civilians- and 160 Israelis -most of them soldiers-, as well as significant material damage in the Arab country.
Resolution 1701 calls for an end to the conflict, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and the deployment in the south of the country of Lebanese forces and of UNIFIL itself. It also calls for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, which includes Hezbollah, and that there be no armed forces other than those of UNIFIL and Lebanon south of the Litani River, which includes both Israel and the Lebanese militia-party.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)