Seven people have been charged in Lebanon for their involvement in a deadly December attack on Irish peacekeepers, a judicial official told AFP on Thursday (January 5th).
One soldier was killed and three others were injured on 14 December when their United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (FINUL) vehicle was attacked near the village of Al-Aqbiya in southern Lebanon, where the powerful Hezbollah Shiite movement is strongly established.
UNIFIL then called on Beirut to quickly shed light on the attack, and a few days later, Hezbollah handed over to the Lebanese authorities a man suspected of being the "main shooter", without saying whether he was a member of this left.
For now, this man is the only one to be detained as part of the investigation.
Six people on the run
Mohammad Ayyad was "charged with killing the Irish soldier and attempting to kill his three comrades by shooting them with a machine gun", said the judicial official who requested anonymity.
The judge also charged "six fugitives […] for uttering threats with an illegal weapon, destroying the UNIFIL vehicle and intimidating its passengers".
A Lebanese judicial source told AFP that seven bullets, fired from automatic weapons, had pierced the vehicle, whose driver was killed by a bullet to the head.
UNIFIL, made up of some 10,000 peacekeepers, has been deployed since 1978 to buffer Lebanon and Israel, which remain technically in a state of war.
In the past, there have been incidents between Blue Helmet patrols and supporters of Hezbollah, which, on this latest attack, collaborated in the investigation and presented its condolences to UNIFIL.
With AFP
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