Spain: Israel Deliberately Targeted UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon

Spanish Soldier Was Slain in January Attack

A leaked confidential military report from the Spanish Armed Forces has determined that the death of Corporal Ivan Lopez Sanchez, a soldier who was serving in the UN observer force in Lebanon, was the result of a deliberate Israeli attack.

Cpl. Sanchez died in Lebanon on January 28 in an Israeli shelling. On January 18 Israel attacked a group of Hezbollah anti-ISIS fighters in Syria, killing five of them. The January 28 incident came when Hezbollah forces in Lebanon killed a pair of Israeli soldiers.

Instead of retaliating against the Hezbollah forces at the Lebanon border, Israel launched artillery strikes deeper inland, hitting a UN observation post and killing the Spanish corporal.

This was not the first time Cpl. Sanchez’s killing was indicated to have been intentional, as the UN noted that the Israeli strikes zeroed in specifically on the known observer post, and made no attempt to hit the source of the fire in Lebanon.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.