Tensions escalate in Lebanon after UN peacekeepers shoot down Israeli drone

There are conflicting accounts of the incident

Tensions in southern Lebanon have escalated following reports that UN peacekeepers shot down an Israeli drone over the weekend, an incident that has drawn conflicting statements from both the Israeli army and the United Nations peacekeeping mission.

It unfolds amidst a backdrop of intensifying Israeli military actions across Lebanon, challenging a fragile ceasefire established last November after Israel's conflict with Hezbollah.

The Lebanese government is simultaneously facing mounting international pressure to disarm the powerful group.

The renewed hostility traces back to the day after the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

Subsequently, the militant group Hezbollah, primarily based in southern Lebanon, began launching rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian cause.

Israeli Arabic military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Monday that while the drone was near peacekeeping forces from UNIFIL in the southeastern border town of Kfar Kila, it was conducting “routine information-gathering and reconnaissance activity” and did not fire at the peacekeeping troops.

An Israeli drone flies over Beirut on 20 October (AP)

“After the drone was shot down, Defence Army forces threw a hand grenade at the area where the drone was downed,” Mr Adraee said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

UNIFIL, however, in a statement Sunday said an Israeli drone had flown over a UNIFIL patrol “in an aggressive manner” and that “peacekeepers applied necessary defensive countermeasures to neutralise” it.

It said that shortly after that, an Israeli drone dropped a grenade near the peacekeeping mission and an Israeli tank fired toward them.

No peacekeepers were wounded.

The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops after Israel’s 1978 invasion of southern Lebanon. Its mission was expanded following the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Earlier this year, the U.N. Security Council voted to end UNIFIL's mandate as of 31 December 2026, at which point the force will have a year to wind down its mission and withdraw its forces and personnel.