High_Gravity
Belligerent Drunk
Italian Peacekeepers Injured in Lebanon Bombing
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/world/middleeast/28lebanon.html?ref=middleeast
BEIRUT A roadside bomb targeted a United Nations convoy near a southern Lebanese port Friday, wounding several Italian peacekeepers and a Lebanese passerby in the first attack on the force in more than three years, Lebanese officials said.
Italian defense officials said six of the countrys peacekeepers had been injured.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on the United Nations forces, a longtime presence in southern Lebanon that was reinforced after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement.
But Lebanons weak government, ineffective military and combustible mix of political and sectarian forces with foreign paymasters, has often made it an arena for geopolitical vendettas. Many in Lebanon have been bracing for possible strife amid a nine-week uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that has led to increasing international pressure on him to institute democratic changes.
The convoy was struck near Sidon, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city outside the control of Hezbollah. Officials there said four vehicles were heading from Beirut, the capital, to Naqoura, near the border with Lebanon and Israel. The bomb detonated beyond a Lebanese army checkpoint on a highway that runs along the Mediterranean.
The last attack on United Nations forces in Lebanon was in January 2008, when a roadside bomb struck United Nations vehicles traveling along the same road south of Beirut, lightly wounding two peacekeepers. The deadliest attack in recent years was in 2007, when six peacekeepers were killed by a bomb that hit their armored personnel carriers near the fortified Israeli border.
The United Nations peacekeeping force, known here by its acronym UNIFIL, was first deployed to southern Lebanon in 1978 after an Israeli invasion. The force now employees more than 12,000 military personnel under the command of a Spanish general. Italy has 2,500 soldiers in Lebanon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/world/middleeast/28lebanon.html?ref=middleeast