The U.N. Security Council has expressed “strong concern” after several U.N. peacekeepers were wounded when they came under fire in southern Lebanon, and has reiterated its support for the peacekeeping mission’s role “in supporting regional security.”

The council’s statement was its first reaction to the escalating attacks across the U.N.-drawn boundary between Israel and Lebanon, and the firing at frontline positions of the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL.

Israeli 0Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “repeatedly asked” the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to temporarily leave the area where the Israeli military is operating.

The peacekeepers belong to the 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, who have been patrolling the border area between Lebanon and Israel for nearly 50 years.

One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel's multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens.

At least 21 people were killed in a strike on north Lebanon Monday, with the health ministry and official media reporting an Israeli raid on the Christian-majority area far from Hezbollah strongholds.

"Eighteen dead and four wounded in the strike on Aito," the Red Cross said, referring to a village in the Christian-majority Zgharta district. The National News Agency said Israel targeted a "residential apartment" in the village.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Monday held talks in Ain el-Tineh with Speaker Nabih Berri.

“The meeting is aimed at highlighting a major Lebanese stance over the main topics on which there is a sort of unanimity, topped by the ceasefire and the implementation of Resolution 1701,” Bassil said after the meeting.

As the war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah escalates, a United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon is increasingly in the crosshairs, with Israeli troops firing at the peacekeepers' headquarters and positions several times in the past week.

The peacekeepers belong to the 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, who have been patrolling the border area between Lebanon and Israel for nearly 50 years.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin is accusing Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the United Nations.

Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UNIFIL peacekeepers leave their bases after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein.”

An Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks.

The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.

Hezbollah on Sunday aired an audio recording of its slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah just over two weeks after an Israeli air strike killed him in southern Beirut.

"We count on you... to defend your people, your families, your nation, your values and your dignity, and to defend this holy and blessed land and this honorable people," said Nasrallah, who was killed on September 27, in a recording it said was made as he addressed the group's fighters during a military maneuver.

Hezbollah has threatened Israel with more attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continued, after a drone attack on a base near Israel's Haifa Sunday killed four soldiers.

Israel's military said four soldiers were killed in the attack, the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.