White House ‘deeply concerned’ about report of Israeli fire on UN peacekeepers

The White House says it is “deeply concerned” about a report from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon that Israeli forces opened fire on locations where peacekeepers were working and injured two of them.

“We are deeply concerned about reports that Israeli forces fired on two positions and a tower used by U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in a statement Thursday. “We reached out immediately to our Israeli counterparts about it, and pressed them for more details.”

The statement said that although Israel is conducting operations in the area to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure that could threaten Israelis, "it is critical that they not threaten U.N. peacekeepers’ safety and security.”