The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said one of its posts was targeted on Wednesday near the border with Israel by small-arms fire, but there were no casualties. "This morning, several rounds of small arms fire impacted a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the Blue Line in Sector East," the UN force said in a statement, referring to the de facto border between Lebanon and Israel. The blue helmets described the shooting as "unacceptable". "Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers," it said, adding that it was investigating the incident. Under US pressure, the UN Security Council decided in August to fix December as the end of the mandate for UNIFIL, which has been deployed since 1978. Last month, Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam insisted at the UN on the need to "avert the vacuum" that would be caused by withdrawing the peacekeeping mission deployed in the country's south without a viable replacement. UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries. Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a memorandum of understanding in the US-Iran war struck in June, while Lebanon and Israel concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month. The Lebanon-Israel deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon's south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as "pilot zones".
