UN peacekeeper killed by mortar fire in south Lebanon hours after truce

A peacekeeper serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was killed early Thursday when mortar fire struck his position near Marjayoun in the country's southeast. The U.N. mission identified him as a Serbian soldier, Sergeant Milovan Jovanović, who was flown to a hospital in Beirut after sustaining critical injuries but died of his wounds.

Two other peacekeepers, from El Salvador and Spain, were wounded in the same attack and were being treated at a medical facility on the UNIFIL base. The deaths bring to seven the number of UNIFIL personnel killed since fighting in southern Lebanon reignited in March, a toll that has intensified concern over the safety of the long-running peacekeeping force.

It was not immediately clear who fired the mortars. A U.N. source said the rounds appeared to have come from Hezbollah, but the group denied striking a peacekeeping position. UNIFIL has repeatedly warned that its troops are operating in an increasingly dangerous environment as exchanges between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters escalate.

The strike came only hours after Israel and Lebanon announced a conditional ceasefire following a fourth round of negotiations in Washington. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described the agreement as a 'last chance' to reach a comprehensive truce, but the deal was fragile from the outset.

Hezbollah, which was not party to the Washington talks, rejected the ceasefire outright, and Israel resumed air and artillery strikes across southern Lebanon on Thursday. Earlier Israeli strikes had killed eight people, deepening doubts that the latest diplomatic framework could hold without the participation of the armed group at the center of the fighting.

The killing of a peacekeeper adds a further complication to an already precarious situation, raising the prospect of friction between the United Nations and the parties to the conflict. UNIFIL, deployed along the Israel-Lebanon frontier for decades, has found its mandate increasingly tested as the war grinds on with no durable settlement in sight.