BEIRUT — An explo­sion has killed or injured at least four Span­ish mem­bers of UNIFIL and wounded sev­eral oth­ers, although reports trick­ling in are con­tra­dic­tory and con­fus­ing. UNIFIL spokes­peo­ple are cur­rently not answer­ing phones — or the lines are busy. (The linked arti­cle says four Span­ish sol­diers were killed and four oth­ers wounded, but other sto­ries give dif­fer­ing accounts.)
UPDATE: LBC and AP now report five Span­ish troops killed, three wounded. Two bod­ies were charred beyond imme­di­ate recog­ni­tion.
The explo­sion could have been an IED or car-bomb, as some reports indi­cate, or it could have been an unex­ploded mine, which lit­ter the south of Lebanon. Obvi­ously, if it’s a mine that’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story than if they were attacked. Indeed, Reuters says it was a land­mine that killed four and wounded six.
UPDATE: Reuters is now report­ing an IED det­o­nated by remote con­trol. And I spoke with a source famil­iar with the unex­ploded ord­nance in the Khiam area and the United Nations’ mine clear­ing oper­a­tions. The source said if it was a mine, it would have had to be an anti-tank mine, which aren’t as com­mon in Lebanon as anti-personnel mines and that the Khiam area has been pre­vi­ously cleared of unex­ploded mines left­over from the var­i­ous wars that have hit south Lebanon over the years.
Ini­tial thoughts: The Span­ish were prob­a­bly in a “BMR-600″:http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/bmr-600.htm armored per­son­nel car­rier, “as shown here”:http://www.armyrecognition.com/europe/Espagne/vehicules_a_roues/BMR_600/BMR-600_101106_Spain_news_001.jpg. Per­haps some read­ers might be able to pro­vide some insight on land­mine vul­ner­a­bil­ity of the BMR-600?
Also, groups claim­ing to be or affil­i­ated with al Qaeda have long made threats against UNIFIL, but none have been car­ried out so far (assum­ing the explo­sion is a land­mine and not a planted IED or some­thing.) UNIFIL is ham­pered by its lack of good intel­li­gence on the ground and a clear author­ity to pur­sue counter-terrorism activ­i­ties. As such, Brook­ings notes, UNIFIL is forced to rely on the Lebanese secu­rity regime, which is rel­a­tively weak and ham­strung by the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. The cur­rent con­tretemps up north with Fatah al-Islam, which has pledged to expand its cam­paign out­side the camp of Nahr el-Bared, fur­ther com­pli­cate mat­ters. Brook­ings believes the threat of a “cat­a­strophic” attack against UNIFIL is real, but not immi­nent, but today’s blast, assum­ing it was an attack and not a tragic acci­dent, could be a prob­ing move­ment to gauge UNFIL’s response and an attempt to affect its mil­i­tary pos­ture and morale. Also, don’t for­get the home­fronts for the con­trib­u­tor coun­tries: Spain and France might go wob­bly with their troop con­tri­bu­tion should minor attacks pick­ing off peace­keep­ers a few at a time become more com­mon.
But why Spain? Spain, with 1,100 troops has the third largest con­tri­bu­tion, behind France and Italy, and has been one of the more aggres­sive of the UNIFIL con­tin­gents, tak­ing an active role in weapons con­fis­ca­tion and closely mon­i­tor­ing Hezbol­lah in the region. This has led to ten­sions with some Shi’ite vil­lages, that are largely sym­pa­thetic to Hezbol­lah. Ear­lier this year, angry res­i­dents of a vil­lage just north of UNIFIL’s deploy­ment mobbed a jeep full of Span­ish sol­diers because the vil­lagers thought they were spy­ing against Hezbol­lah. In Decem­ber, accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Hezbol­lah planted sev­eral bombs against one of the Span­ish patrols, “which had dis­cov­ered an aban­doned Hizbul­lah posi­tion with stock­piled mor­tar shells and rockets.”

The area was for­merly used by Hizbul­lah to launch attacks into the She­baa Farms, an Israeli-occupied moun­tain­side claimed by Lebanon. The trip-wire det­o­nated bombs, all con­structed from Israeli-made com­po­nents, were planted by “experts with a lot of tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence,” an inter­nal UNIFIL report on the inci­dent said.
“This sit­u­a­tion sug­gests a change in the threat that UNIFIL may have to face,” the report said.

After the bombs were dis­cov­ered, Hezbol­lah told UNIFIL it was a local com­man­der who was act­ing on his own and that he would be rep­ri­manded and the inci­dent would not be repeated.
In Feb­ru­ary, how­ever, the Israeli army dis­man­tled five linked bombs on a bor­der road, claim­ing they were planted by Hezbol­lah the week­end before. Hezbol­lah denied it, say­ing the bombs were from before the July war last year and UNIFIL said there was no way to tell when the bombs were planted.
But Hezbol­lah is not the only — or even most likely — party behind the bomb­ing. In fact, my hunch is they are the _least_ likely to have done this. More likely are jihadis who are oper­at­ing in sol­i­dar­ity with Fatah al-Islam up north (there were per­sis­tent sto­ries cir­cu­lat­ing that UNIFIL’s naval con­tin­gent was tak­ing part in the bom­bard­ment of Nahr el-Bared), gen­uine al Qaeda ele­ments or wannabes who want to impress al Qaeda lead­er­ship in order to gain admis­sion. There has been so far no claim of respon­si­bil­ity, and the list of pos­si­ble bombers is a long one.
More as infor­ma­tion becomes available.