French President Emmanuel Macron accused Hezbollah on Saturday of attacking a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon position in Southern Lebanon, killing a French soldier and injuring three others.
“Sergeant-Chef Florian Montorio of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment from Montauban fell this morning in Southern Lebanon during an attack against UNIFIL,” Macron tweeted in French.
“Three of his brothers-in-arms are wounded and have been evacuated. … Everything suggests that responsibility for this attack lies with Hezbollah. France demands that the Lebanese authorities immediately arrest the perpetrators,” he added.
UNIFIL said in a statement that a peacekeeping unit clearing explosive ordnance along a road in the village of Ghandouriyah, west of the Israeli border town of Metula, to reestablish links with isolated UNIFIL positions “came under small-arms fire from non-state-actors.”
One peacekeeper succumbed to his wounds and three others were injured, two of them seriously, the international force said.
UNIFIL condemned the attack and said that initial assessments pointed at Hezbollah as the perpetrator