THE Irish Battalion area, alongside the Israeli occupied zone in southern Lebanon, experienced some of the heaviest reported shelling and air attacks from Israeli forces, writes Jim Cusack.
More than 700 of the 3,000 shells fired into south Lebanon on Sunday landed in the Irish Battalion area. Heavy shelling was also reported in the area yesterday and most of the 700 strong battalion spent much of yesterday in bunkers for the fifth day in a row.
Up to the weekend about 1,000 Lebanese civilians were sheltering in Irish posts but only about 300 people, mostly elderly, remained in the protection of the Irish troops by yesterday with the rest fleeing northwards.
Some 200 members of the battalion were due to home today but this has been put back a week. Road travel has not been possible as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have jammed all roads leading north to Beirut.
The Irish Battalion should be in the process of rotating but there is no certainty about when the 78th Battalion, which has been serving with Unifil for the last six months, will leave and the 79th Battalion arrive. The rotation should have taken place over a three week period starting yesterday.
Nine of the shells fired by the Israelis have landed near Irish UN positions.
On Sunday, the battalion sent an armoured ambulance from its headquarters near the town of Tibnin to bring a pregnant woman, who had been sheltering at one of the outlying Irish UN posts, to the hospital in Tibnin. While the Finnish "Sizu" armoured vehicle stood outside the hospital, where about 500 people are sheltering, an Israeli shell landed about 150 metres away and debris struck the vehicle. No one was injured. The ambulance later returned the woman, who had been distressed by the shelling, to the post where other members of her family were sheltering.
The Irish Battalion has a tradition of protecting people during conflict in the area and many soldiers have close friends in the local community. An estimated 450 people were being protected at the Irish Battalion headquarters close to Tibnin.