Pope Francis appealed for respect for UN peacekeeping troops after at least five were injured in Lebanon by Israeli attacks.
“I am close to all the populations involved, in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon, where I ask the United Nations peacekeeping forces to be respected,” he said on Sunday, adding that “the paths of diplomacy and dialogue must be pursued to achieve peace”.
There are nearly 10,000 troops from around 50 countries stationed with the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as Unifil.
The UN itself said that “attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law and may constitute a war crime”, and that peacekeeping troops would remain in position despite the instruction from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they withdraw.
On 9 October, a missile attack by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hit a Catholic church sheltering displaced people in Derdghaya, southern Lebanon, killing at least eight people. Another missile destroyed a priest's house and a three-storey building housing parish offices.
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reported that the church and two of its adjoining halls, used as shelters by the Melkite Greek Catholic Eparchy of Tyre, collapsed in the airstrike. The charity has provided food parcels for thousands of families displaced from their homes and medical help for 1,200 people.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that by last weekend, two weeks after the IDF began “limited, localised and targeted ground raids” against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, at least 1,645 people had been killed since Israel escalated attacks on Lebanon in September, while 1.2 million were displaced.
“The situation now is very critical and terrible,” said Caritas Lebanon, which operates health care centres across Lebanon and has provided food and water to more than 25,000 displaced people.
Christian families in the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon have sheltered thousands of people displaced from the south. Maronite Archbishop Hanna Rahmé of Baalbek-Deir El-Ahmar, in the Beqaa Valley, said parts of his archdiocese had suffered daily bombardment, forcing around 13,000 people to flee to predominantly Catholic areas.
“Each of the Christian families in the villages around Deir El-Ahmar has welcomed three or four displaced families, that is, between 30 and 60 people,” he said.
The archbishop explained that around 5,000 had been taken in by families, while thousands of others have found temporary accommodation in schools and Church-owned buildings, but many others were sleeping rough.
He said that the homes of Christian families were open to “people in the zones under bombardment – Christians and Muslims alike”. Muslims “are enormously touched by this Christian solidarity”, he said.
Maronite Bishop Mounir Khairallah of Batrun called the Lebanese people to forgiveness despite the IDF attacks.
Speaking in Rome during the assembly of the Synod on Synodality, he said that “in all this, the population of Lebanon rejects, as always, the language of hatred and vengeance”. He added that “despite everything, we as peoples of all cultures of all confessions, want peace – we are capable of building peace”.
On Monday, an IDF strike on the Christian-majority town of Aitou in northern Lebanon killed at least 18 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross, hitting a house let to displaced families.
Hezbollah fired rockets at Tel Aviv and at targets south of the Israeli town of Binyamina, where four Israeli soldiers were killed by a drone strike on Sunday.
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