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Blast kills 6 peacekeepers

The car bombing in Lebanon is the first attack on U.N. forces since war last summer.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 25, 2007

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A car bombing killed six U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Sunday, opening another potentially disastrous fault line in a country held hostage to violence and political deadlock.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the peacekeepers, who were deployed along the border with Israel after last summer's war with Hezbollah. But suspicion immediately fell on militant Islamists, who are fighting the Lebanese army in the country's north. The U.N. force, UNIFIL, has been on alert for weeks because of that fight and several bombings that are believed to be related to it.

The attack on Sunday hit two U.N. vehicles on a main road near the southern town of Khiam. Witnesses said ammunition in at least one of the vehicles exploded after the initial blast.

"Apparently, it was a car bomb attack, " said Milos Strugar, a spokesman for the U.N. force. He said investigations were under way.

UNIFIL said in a statement that the six peacekeepers were killed and two others seriously wounded. The Spanish defense minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, said three Colombians and two Spanish peacekeepers were among the dead.

It was another bloody day in the small Mediterranean nation, which has been hit by two years of killings and war. At the same time, the government has been paralyzed for months by a political crisis between American-backed officials trying to hold power, and Iranian- and Syrian-backed groups, led by Hezbollah, who are trying to take more governmental authority.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, visited Lebanon last week and left having failed to hammer out a political deal, and he warned that time might be running out.

In the past five weeks alone, since fighting began in the north between the army and militant Islamists holed up in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, at least seven bombs have exploded in Lebanon. Less than two weeks ago, one of those bombs killed an anti-Syrian lawmaker, his son and six others.

"From the north to the south, the whole country is now engaged, and the worst is to come, " said Hilal Khashan, a political analyst in Beirut.

On Sunday, before the attack on the U.N. peacekeepers, Lebanese troops raided an apartment complex suspected of housing Islamic militants in the northern port city of Tripoli, sparking a gunbattle that left 10 people dead, including a soldier and six gunmen, security officials said. The raid was one of dozens stemming from the nearby battle at the refugee camp.

An army spokesman said the dead included three Saudi nationals, a Lebanese married couple and one Chechen.

Now, while the fighting continues in the north, the attack on the U.N. vehicles in the south confirmed fears that no corner of Lebanon could be considered safe.

Hezbollah condemned the attacks, as did the other partisans in Lebanon's political conflict.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified June 25, 2007, 00:59:25]