The body of the Irish blue helmet killed Wednesday in Lebanon, Sean Rooney, 23, was repatriated Monday morning to Dublin, noted an AFP journalist.
This soldier lost his life on Wednesday in shootings against a vehicle of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (FINUL), in a village in southern Lebanon where the pro-Iranian Hezbollah is strongly established.
A ceremony in tribute to Sean Rooney.
ANWAR AMRO / AFP
The plane carrying his body landed shortly after 8.30 a.m. GMT in rainy and windy weather at the Casement military airfield in Baldonnel, on the outskirts of the Irish capital.
Greeted by a guard of honour, the white coffin, covered with the Irish flag, was carried by soldiers inside a hangar.
The body must be autopsied before being handed over to the military's family.
"
Sean Rooney has made the hardest sacrifice a soldier can make: giving his life in the service of peace in Lebanon
," said General Aroldo Lazaro Saenz, UNIFIL's chief of mission and commander, during the meeting. a Sunday ceremony in Lebanon.
Denouncing a "
crime against the international community and against the blue helmets who are here to maintain stability
", the spokesperson for this international force, Andrea Tenenti, assured that it would "
continue its activities and its patrols
" in the southern Lebanon.
Read alsoFINUL: why the UN is in Lebanon
Three other soldiers were injured, one seriously.
The two minor injuries were able to leave the hospital, the Irish army announced on Saturday.
UNIFIL, made up of 10,000 blue helmets, has been deployed since 1978 to act as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, which remain technically in a state of war.
According to witnesses interviewed by AFP, the vehicle driven by the killed Blue Helmet was intercepted by residents of the village of Al-Aqbiya.
According to them, a certain tension preceded the attack.
But a Lebanese judicial source assured AFP on Friday that no altercation between the population and UNIFIL had taken place before the shooting and that the information that the UNIFIL vehicle had hit a villager was unfounded.
According to a Lebanese judicial source, seven bullets pierced the vehicle, one of which killed the driver head-on.
The other three soldiers were injured when the vehicle hit a pylon.
Incidents had pitted Hezbollah supporters against UNIFIL patrols in the past, but the pro-Iranian organization stood out from Wednesday's attack.
