President Emmanuel Macron has said that a French soldier who was seriously injured in an attack on UN peacekeepers in Lebanon last week has died.
Another French peacekeeper was killed and two others were injured in the incident; According to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), their patrol in the village of Ghandourieh in southern Lebanon was attacked with small arms on Saturday.
In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, Macron said that one of the wounded soldiers, Chief Corporal Anicet Girardin, who was evacuated to France the day before, had died.
The president expressed his condolences to Girardin’s relatives and the families of other soldiers injured in the attack, which he blamed on the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday that “Denials any connection with the incident.” calling for “Carefulness in taking decisions and delegating responsibilities” An investigation by the Lebanese army is pending.
The group has been involved in heavy fighting with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The February 28 attack on West Jerusalem comes less than a week after the American-Israeli attack on Iran in southern Lebanon. Earlier in April, US President Donald Trump had announced that both sides had agreed to a ten-day ceasefire, which ends on Sunday.
According to Beirut officials, ground fighting and IDF airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 2,300 people and displaced more than 1.2 million.
A total of three French soldiers have lost their lives in the current Middle East conflict. A drone strike on a French-Kurdish base in northern Iraq in mid-March also killed one soldier and wounded several others.
At the moment, about 700 French troops are deployed in Lebanon as part of UNIFIL, which includes 7,505 peacekeepers from 47 countries.
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Paris, which has enduring political and economic ties with Beirut, has been deploying its peacekeepers to Lebanon since 1978. More than 160 French soldiers have been killed in the country since then.
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