Word: spanishness
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...Lebanon is teetering on the edge of chaos. A car bomb last month killed six Spanish and Colombian U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, the first attack against the force, known as UNIFIL, since it was enlarged at the end of last summer's war. In Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, the national Army remains locked in a brutal six-week confrontation with militants inspired by al-Qaeda. And a series of bomb attacks and the assassination of a Sunni politician last month underscore the deep divisions tearing apart this tiny country. Those divisions have steadily...
...contingents comprising the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL have good cause for concern. Last month, six Spanish and Colombian UNIFIL soldiers were killed in a bomb ambush, the deadliest attack against the peacekeeping mission in its 29-year history. In a video message released this week, Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri hailed the attack as "a response against those invading Crusader forces who were occupying a beloved part of the land of Islam". And, UNIFIL officials fear, given the worsening security situation in Lebanon, there could be more attacks on the way. "The major difficulty we are going...
...Lebanon posed by groups inspired by Al-Qaeda. Graziano admitted that UNIFIL regularly receives warnings of imminent attacks, but "the level of credibility of the warning is not always very high". There was no prior warning, however, to the June 24 car bomb attack against an armored patrol of Spanish peacekeepers. The remote-controlled explosion knocked an armored personnel carrier (APC) off the road, killing six soldiers in what a Western military officer familiar with the investigation said was an "extraordinarily sophisticated" operation...
...claim of responsibility for the attack has been made, although Spanish intelligence officials reportedly are pointing the finger at three Sunni jihadist groups, linked to Al-Qaeda, based in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The military officer said that the operation would have required weeks if not months of planning by a highly skilled team. "Incredibly detailed planning went into this," the officer told TIME on strict condition of anonymity. The bomb was approximately 220 pounds, with the blast directed laterally against the targeted...
Nonetheless, a Hizballah official in south Lebanon confirmed to TIME that there was at least one meeting between Spanish UNIFIL officers and Hizballah representatives after the bomb attack. Furthermore, Hizballah officials have met with Spanish diplomats in Beirut and the Madrid government is believed to have held talks with Iran, Hizballah's patron, on the safety of its peacekeepers. At least one other European contingent enjoys regular direct contact with Hizballah, finessing Graziano's order by using a civilian advisor who was hired outside the UNIFIL framework...