Asharq Al-Awsat learned from an informed official source that, in the past few hours, Hezbollah handed over the killer of the Irish patrol to the intelligence of the Lebanese army.
The source confirmed that the incident “made it necessary to increase the level of coordination between the Lebanese army and international forces”. He said that the commander of the UNIFIL forces, General Aroldo Lázaro Saenz, “asked, from the very first moment of the incident, for a transparent investigation, and the arrest of the shooters and bringing them to justice, and is obliged to provide to the United Nations in New York with answers as to the truth of what happened.”
And the official source quoted UNIFIL officials as saying “swift action is needed leading to the arrest of the perpetrators and that the investigation shows that the incident was accidental and not a premeditated act.” And he stressed that “even if it were correct that the Irish patrol got lost, or that it erred and changed course, this does not require the commission of a murder”.
However, the security and judicial investigations into the incident continue. A judicial source told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the investigation has come to know all the details”. He underlined that “the details of the crime will soon be disclosed, through which the causes of the accident will be revealed, and whether it was accidental or planned”.
On the occasion of Christmas, the Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Al-Rai, sent a message in which he speaks of a “plan against Lebanon” to create a presidential holiday associated with a constitutional vacuum that increasingly complicates the election of a president for the republic, considering that the international conflict hinders efforts to realize this merit, and at the same time renewed its request to convene a conference sponsored by the United Nations and countries friendly to Lebanon, to neutralize it from any military confrontation in this unknown region phase.
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