Peacekeepers face high risk to life- Indian soldiers on UN duty caught in crossfire as ground war looms on Lebanon, 602 civilians back homeNew Delhi, July 22:
There are 673 Indian soldiers on duty with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), part of a 1,900-troop-strong deployment that includes a battalion from Ghana. One Indian soldier was injured in Israeli shelling earlier this week.
From the 121-km “thin Blue Line” on the Israel-Lebanon border, the deputy force commander of UNIFIL told The Telegraph on Friday night that “there are risks of collateral damage because the Hizbollah fire from close to our (UNIFIL) positions at Israel and then there is retaliatory fire from the IDF (Israeli defence forces)”.
The troops of the Indian Army and the Ghana battalion man about 45 posts on the Israel-Lebanon border. Most Israeli incursions so far have been through the Ghanaian sector, including a firefight at Maroun Al Ras, the settlement that is also the battalion headquarters.
India is usually reluctant to pull out of UN duties — the exception in recent years has been from the UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone in 2002 — but the risks are now getting closer to the “unacceptably high” category, the defence source in New Delhi said, particularly since Israeli defence forces began deploying troops on the border for what is looking like an imminent invasion of southern Lebanon.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060723/asp/nation/story_6514067.aspblessed are the peacemakers . . .