The threat of attacks like the car bomb that killed six U.N. soldiers in south Lebanon last month is now the greatest obstacle to the peacekeeping mission there, the U.N. force's commander said on Tuesday.Nearly a year after a 34-day war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, the 13,000-strong UNIFIL force considers it has done a good job in keeping the area calm, alongside Lebanese army troops who deployed in the south after the war. UNIFIL has faced no hostilities from Hezbollah or Israel since the war ended, but the June 24 bombing that wrecked a Spanish troop carrier has redrawn the security landscape.
"It was an attack against UNIFIL, but broadly speaking an attack against stabilisation in Lebanon," the force's Italian commander, Major-General Claudio Graziano, told Reuters. "If you really want to destabilize Lebanon, you have to attack UNIFIL," he said in an interview at his seaside headquarters in Naqoura near the Israeli border.
Last year al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged attacks on UNIFIL after it was expanded under U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 that halted the war with Israel. No group has claimed responsibility for the car bombing, which Graziano described as "quite sophisticated", involving about 50 kg of explosives detonated by remote control.