Irish troops on peacekeeping duties in Lebanon intend to remain in place even if Israel stages an invasion over the coming weeks, a senior Unifil officer and Defence Forces member has said.
Speaking from south Lebanon on Monday morning, Lt Col Seán Ó Fátharta told RTÉ's Morning Ireland that while there are contingency plans to protect the UN troops in the event their situation becomes unsafe, the intention is for the force to remain in place and continue its monitoring and humanitarian work.
Up to 375 personnel comprising an Infantry Battalion and personnel are serving at Unifil headquarters in Naqoura and Shama in south Lebanon near the border with Israel. The Defence Forces has been part of the United Nations Interim Force Lebanon (Unifil) since 1978 and also plays a smaller role in a other missions.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Micheál Martin on Monday called for de-escalation and ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon.
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Mr Martin said he had spoken to Defence Forces Chief of Staff Seán Clancy on Monday morning and Irish soldiers serving with UNIFIL are “safe”.
Irish troops are based at two of the UN posts along the Blue Line, the demarcation border between Israel and Lebanon, where they work closely with Polish colleagues.
“It is obviously highly volatile, it is dangerous,” said Lt Col Ó Fátharta. “But we are taking precautions. We are really focused on the force protection of our troops.
“Our ability to patrol the area of operations has been limited but when there have been windows of opportunity, we have carried out limited patrolling, carrying out battle damage assessments. We have also had windows to resupply our positions. So we’re still we’re still on fresh rations. But there have been challenges.”
He said there had been “a massive exodus” of the local population, with an estimated 90,000 civilians leaving the area to travel north as bombardments worsened and the fears of a full scale invasion grew.
If that happened, he said, the intention is that UN troops would remain in place as long as possible.
“We are not planning to move,” he said. “We have a mandate, UN Security Council Resolution 1701, just recently renewed. And Lebanon and Israel are a party to that.
“We have contingency plans but our focus is on remaining and focusing on the mission from within our UN positions. We are still able to monitor, and we are reporting constantly the violations of 1701.
“A decision to withdraw Unifil would be at Security Council level, but at the tactical and operational level, we are very much focused on remaining in place, sheltering while we have to and then we are ready then to get back out and recommence operations as soon as the security situation permits.
“There have been five invasions of Lebanon since 1978 and Unifil has stayed the course every time.”
At a press conference in Dublin, Mr Martin was asked if Irish troops and Unifil will remain in Lebanon given the escalation in violence.
Mr Martin replied: “We keep every scenario under review”.
He said he met Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN’s under-secretary-general for peace operations, in New York last week “specifically to sort of tease through some of those issues with him”.
He said there are thousands of peace-keeping troops in Lebanon including from Poland and Hungary and “it has to be done in a unified basis if anything was to happen”.
Mr Martin also cautioned that there is “danger in early movement” and that “actually bunkering down” within Unifil’s area of operation “is probably the safest thing to do right now because there’s a lot of uncertainty around Lebanon”.
Mr Martin was speaking at the official opening of a new headquarters for Dublin Civil Defence in Cherry Orchard.
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