Lebanese investigators have identified suspects in Seán Rooney killing, judicial source says

LEBANESE INVESTIGATORS HAVE identified suspects in the attack on the Irish UN Peacekeeping vehicles in which Private Seán Rooney was shot and killed.

The attack which also injured Private Shane Kearney and two other soldiers on December 14 happened at the village of Al-Aqbiya in Lebanon’s south. The area is a stronghold of powerful Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

“The investigation has been able to identify suspects but so far none has been arrested and the security services are still looking for them,” a judicial official told AFP.

The Lebanese armed forces investigation is separate from a United Nations probe and an Irish Military police examination of what happened.

The UN patrol “was the target of gunfire from at least two people” when it arrived in Al-Aqbiya, according to the same source.

Citing preliminary findings, the source said the incident “was premeditated and the patrol was surveilled and followed by a car carrying armed men”.

UNIFIL acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, neighbours which remain technically at war. The force operates near the southern border.

Wafic Safa, Hezbollah’s security chief, has said the killing was “unintentional”.

Witnesses said villagers in the Al-Aqbiya area blocked Rooney’s vehicle.

A Lebanese judicial source earlier told AFP that the driver was killed by gun fire. The three passengers were injured when the vehicle hit a pylon and overturned.

According to the judicial official, the patrol was “harassed and intercepted at two locations before reaching the scene of the incident”.

The official said, without elaboration, that there had been “difficulties linked to the investigation” but interviews with civilian witnesses led to the suspects’ identification.

UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack.

Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 but fought a devastating 2006 war with Hezbollah and its allies. UNIFIL was then beefed up to oversee a subsequent ceasefire and now counts more than 10,000 soldiers and naval personnel.