An aid convoy organized by the Vatican envoy to Lebanon that was headed for Christian villages in the country's south was stopped by the Israeli military and forced to change course, a convoy member told AFP on Friday. A number of Christian-majority villages near the border have been caught up in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah but many residents have refused to leave. "While approaching the village of Debl on Thursday, we got face-to-face with several Israeli tanks" who stopped the convoy, a member of the convoy told AFP on condition of anonymity. "There were several tank and machine gun shots towards rear positions that we could not identify... which caused panic," he added. The person said it was not clear "whether they wanted to intimidate us or they were targeting Hezbollah positions". Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military and the Vatican did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The convoy, led by the Apostolic Nuncio Paolo Borgia, included 25 trucks and several cars transporting residents wanting to return home. The route was coordinated with UN peacekeepers through an international committee created to monitor a ceasefire that sought to end the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah conflict. After being halted for over an hour, the convoy took another longer route to reach their destination after 12 hours, the member said. Vincent Gelot, head of Catholic organization Oeuvre d'Orient which regularly takes part in aid convoys, told AFP that the people who chose to remain in their villages "are completely isolated from the rest of the country". "They are deprived of resources because most of them are farmers. They do not have access to their fields." The villages are surrounded by areas and localities Israel has warned to evacuate, with Gelot saying they are "threatened to disappear". On Tuesday, the association of Christian border villages in southern Lebanon urged authorities to "immediately open safe humanitarian and medical corridors to ensure the access of citizens, aid and medical and relief teams to the affected and isolated villages". On June 2, an Israeli drone strike killed a student alongside her father and brother as she was returning to her border village after sitting for university exams in Beirut.
