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.

BEIRUT — A cor­rec­tion to my pre­vi­ous post below: Syria has _not_ closed Mas­naa, and it remains open. LBC was mis­taken last night, as was I. My apolo­gies.
All other land cross­ings remain closed until calm pre­vails in Nahr el-Bared, the Syr­ian for­eign min­is­ter said, accord­ing to SANA.

BEIRUT — Syria has announced that it is clos­ing the two remain­ing land cross­ings into Lebanon as of mid­night tonight, includ­ing the main Mas­naa bor­der cross­ing. Accord­ing to LBC, Lebanese cus­toms offi­cials asked their Syr­ian coun­ter­parts at the bor­der why, only to be told “it’s a polit­i­cal deci­sion.” The cross­ing pre­sum­ably will be closed indefinitely.

Mas­naa is the busiest land cross­ing, sit­ting as it does on the road from Beirut to Dam­as­cus. It is one of Lebanon’s main trade routes ship­ping its agri­cul­tural prod­ucts to the rest of the Mid­dle East and tonight’s clo­sures, fol­low­ing Syria’s clo­sure ear­lier this month of the north­ern bor­der cross­ings because of the vio­lence at “Nahr el-Bared”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/2007/06/the_neverending_crisis.php, leaves Lebanon with no land access to the out­side world.

Syria has often used the bor­der cross­ings to apply polit­i­cal pres­sure on Lebanon since the Feb. 14, 2005 assas­si­na­tion of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri and the sub­se­quent with­drawal of Syr­ian troops from Lebanon.

It could be a bit of a Syr­ian snit-fit in response to a del­e­ga­tion from the Arab League that is in town at the request of the anti-Syrian par­lia­men­tary major­ity. The anti-Syrian bloc is demand­ing Arab states inter­vene with Syria to stop its inter­fer­ence in Lebanese affairs and Dam­as­cus’ alleged weapons smug­gling to var­i­ous armed groups.

Syria is feel­ing the heat from the impo­si­tion of the Inter­na­tional tri­bunal under Chap­ter 7 of the UN char­ter ear­lier this month, and this will put the Lebanon pres­sure cooker under more pressure.

BEIRUT — This is a never-ending story.
The siege of Nahr el-Bared by thou­sands of Lebanese army troops has entered its third week now, and it may be metas­ta­siz­ing. “Clashes broke out at the Ein el-Helweh camp south of Sidon”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/lebanonunrest;_ylt=AsuRIirk3._W3HQk8Liy4WDagGIB yes­ter­day between the Lebanese army and Jund al-Sham overnight and two sol­diers were killed. Two mil­i­tants were also killed.
The fight­ing erupted just hours after Abu Riyadh, who had pre­vi­ously belonged to Jund al-Sham, was killed in Nahr al-Bared.
“Jund al-Sham”:http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369949 is yet another Salafist/Islamist group that has found a haven in the squalid and mis­er­able Pales­tin­ian camps in Lebanon, thanks in no small part because the Lebanese have let the Pales­tini­ans stew rather than inte­grate them into the greater soci­ety. This pol­icy has cre­ated fetid breed­ing grounds for extrem­ist ide­olo­gies in tune with al Qaeda’s, ide­olo­gies which are in marked con­trast to the more laid back and sophis­ti­cated Mediter­ranean out­look of most of Lebanon.
How­ever, there is likely lit­tle coor­di­na­tion between the group respon­si­ble for yesterday’s and this morning’s clashes in the south and Fatah al-Islam up north in Nahr el-Bared. More likely, mem­bers of Jund al-Sham decided it was time to help their broth­ers in Islam and raised a ruckus. Shaker al-Absssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam up north, even told a col­league of mine when she spoke with him this morn­ing that there were no oper­a­tional links between Fatah al-Islam and Jund al-Sham.
Another the­ory, pop­u­lar in the gov­ern­ment cir­cles, is that yesterday’s out­burst in the south was yet another Syr­ian plot to sow chaos in Lebanon, although I have my doubts about that. While Syria is active here and Fatah al-Islam is with­out a doubt (in my mind) a Syr­ian asset, Jund al-Sham looks to be more inde­pen­dent. Not every­thing in Lebanon is made in Syria.
I don’t think the inci­dent in Ein el-Helweh will grow larger than it has. Already, other Pales­tin­ian groups have stepped in and, in effect, told the Jund al-Sham boys to sit down and shut up. The fight­ers report­edly turned over some of their posi­tions to other Islamist groups in the camp.
Sorry for the lack of post­ings over the last three days. Yahoo!‘s servers are crap, and I’m often hav­ing trou­ble get­ting into them. I hope to have this resolved soon. I’m also going to be mak­ing a major announce­ment regard­ing syn­di­ca­tion in the com­ing days, hope­fully.
Also, dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.