Israel murders Jarno Tapio Mäkinen, a Finnish UN peacekeeper, in Khiam, Lebanon

The Israeli army murdered 4 UN peacekeepers on Tuesday July 25th in Khiam, Lebanon by dropping a precision-guided bomb on their bunker. Before dropping the lethal bomb on their heads, the Israelis had been shelling their area for more than six hours getting closer and closer to the UN post the peacekeepers were occupying. The post had been there for years making it impossible for the Israelis not to have known it was there.

The Israeli artillery was firing within 150 metres of the UN post while the UN peacekeepers were calling the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) repeatedly informing the IDF they were firing upon UN peacekeepers and asking them to stop. The killing blow came from a precision-guided bomb, which by definition had to have been targeting the very bunker the UN peacekeepers were in despite knowing the UN peacekeepes were in it.

The Israelis say Hezbollah has been using the Khiam area to launch rockets into Israel justifying shelling the entire area into smithereens. The Israeli policy is apparently to carpet bomb areas where Hezbollah is operating from without consideration of who else is inhabiting said areas. No wonder people outside of Israel (and US) are not too keen on the latest Israeli offensive against Lebanon.

The Israeli response to the attack has been two-fold. While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "deep regret" over the attack, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni basically stated (paraphrased) "tough cookies, people die in a war".

As expected, the United States backed Israel by blocking a UN Security Council resolution condemning the attack.

One of the UN peacekeepers killed in the attack is a 29-year old Finnish lieutenant captain Jarno Tapio Mäkinen from Turku.

-TPP