Spanish lawmaker blasts Israel's ‘barbarity' for firing at UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

By Senhan Bolelli

MADRID (AA) - The leader of Spain’s left-wing Podemos party slammed Israel on Thursday for its attacks on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, saying "the barbarity must be stopped."

In a post on X, Ione Belarra pointed to reports of Israeli forces firing on positions of the United Nations Interim Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

She said Israel has been allowed to bomb five countries in the region with impunity and genocide has been committed against innocent men, women and children.

Stressing that this genocide needs to stop, Belarra also criticized Western countries for providing political and financial assistance to Israel.

"We said it. Today, it is the Palestinians. Tomorrow, if we do not stop the terrorist state of Israel, it could be anyone. The barbarity must be stopped in time," she wrote.

UNIFIL said earlier that its headquarters in Naqoura and other sites have been repeatedly shelled by Israeli forces, injuring two peacekeepers.

Israel has been mounting massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing at least 1,323 people, injuring over 3,700 others and displacing more than 1.2 million.

The aerial campaign is an escalation in a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of Tel Aviv’s brutal offensive against the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 42,000 people, mostly women and children, since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year.

Despite international warnings that the Middle East region is on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, Tel Aviv expanded the conflict by launching a ground invasion into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.