UN Shoots Down Israeli Drone           10/27 06:19

   

   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.