Palestinians convicted for attacking UNIFIL peacekeepers
A Lebanese military court has convicted five Palestinians of carrying out armed attacks, including a bombing aimed at United Nations peacekeepers, a court official said Tuesday. Only one of the five men convicted is in custody after he was sentenced to three years of hard labor, the official said, while the other four men, who are still on the run, were given life sentences in absentia.
Lebanon’s most powerful armed group is Hizbullah, but the country is also home to several smaller armed factions, some of them inspired by Al-Qaeda, whose members have attacked international and Lebanese government forces and periodically launched rockets at Israel.
The court found that the men established an armed gang with the intent to kill civilians, obtained explosive materials and attempted to kill members of a UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon by detonating a roadside bomb targeting a vehicle carrying troops, according to Tuesday’s ruling.
In the January 2008 attack, a roadside bomb exploded near a UN vehicle on a coastal highway south of Beirut lightly wounding two peacekeepers.
The official spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge details of court proceedings to the media.
In July, the same court convicted 12 members of an Al-Qaeda-inspired group of carrying out attacks, including a bombing of a UN peacekeeping jeep in south Lebanon in July 2007.
Several attacks have targeted the international peacekeeping force in recent years. In the most deadly attack, a car bomb killed six Spanish peacekeepers in June 2007.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Al-Qaeda’s deputy chief, Ayman al-Zawahri, praised the attack.
In an audio recording last year, he called on Sunni militants “to expel the invading Crusaders who pretend to be peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.” A 13,000-strong UN force was deployed on Lebanon’s border with Israel as part of the UN resolution that ended the month long war with Israel in 2006.