UNIFIL: No Recent Blue Line Crossing between Lebanon and Israel

Irish UN peacekeepers check the site where a UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL convoy came under fire on Wednesday. (AFP via Getty Images)
Irish UN peacekeepers check the site where a UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL convoy came under fire on Wednesday. (AFP via Getty Images)
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UNIFIL: No Recent Blue Line Crossing between Lebanon and Israel

Irish UN peacekeepers check the site where a UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL convoy came under fire on Wednesday. (AFP via Getty Images)
Irish UN peacekeepers check the site where a UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL convoy came under fire on Wednesday. (AFP via Getty Images)

UNIFIL’s spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said on Thursday that no crossing of the Blue Line has been recorded recently between Lebanon and Israel.

Tenenti said the UNIFIL has inspected media reports claiming that a person has trespassed from Lebanon into Israel, according to dpa.

“The UNIFIL did not record any crossing of the Blue Line in the last few days,” Tenenti was quoted as saying in a statement published by Lebanon’s National News Agency on Thursday.

He added that Head of Mission and Force Commander of the UNIFIL Major General Aroldo Lázaro Sáenz urged both sides to exercise self-control and to preserve stability.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army said it killed an armed suspect on Monday entering the country from Lebanon with a suicide vest and that investigations were ongoing to see if he has links to Hezbollah.

The Israeli army said soldiers stopped a car carrying the bombing suspect at a checkpoint Monday shortly after a roadside explosion seriously injured a driver near Megiddo Junction in the country’s north.

The suspect was wearing a suicide vest and had a rifle and a gun when he was stopped near the border with Lebanon. The army said it shot and killed the man and is questioning the driver.

The army said the device exploded at a 90-degree angle, which is unusual for the area. That led officials to suspect that the man infiltrated from Lebanon and may have been linked to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group.



WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.