U.N. peacekeepers offer health care to Lebanese people displaced by border clashes

(7 Jul 2024)
LEBANON UNIFIL HEALTH
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
LENGTH: 2:41
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tyre, Lebanon - 5 July 2024
1. Various woman walking toward chair and taking seat
2. Various of people displaced by the ongoing fighting at the Lebanese Israeli border getting treatment by United Nations soldiers
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Bruno Vio, Public Information Office chief at UNIFIL:
"This activity is one of the most important activities that in the last week Sector West led by Italy organized in the area of our responsibility. This activity is strictly related to the thousand families that are displaced from their villages of the Blue Line that UNIFIL continue to patrol and monitor everyday."
4. Various of U.N. soldiers checking medicine
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Bruno Vio, Public Information Office chief at UNIFIL:
"Here, in the school (we) are talking to the (inaudible) municipality and the crisis unit. We understood how these people are tired and they need help, and also they need a sign that the international community and the local community is not abandoning them."
6. Various of U.N. doctors talking to the displaced and giving them health care
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohammad Hammoud, displaced man from Yarin:
"I am a civilian from southern Lebanon. My name is Mohammad Hammoud, from the village of Yarin in the border area. I have a chronic disease, diabetes. I came to the Italian unit (at UNIFIL). They examined me and gave me medication. They treated me well."
8. Woman talking to Red Cross personnel
9. Medicine on desk
10. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fatima Mashourab, Lebanese Red Cross volunteer:
"We came and brought the mobile clinic of the Red Cross here today to be at the disposal of the Italian battalion to help them carry out the health activity at this shelter."
11. Lebanese Red Cross personnel checking medicine
12. U.N. soldiers and Red Cross personnel
STORYLINE:
United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon along with the Lebanese Red Cross provided medical care to displaced Lebanese people in the southern coastal city of Tyre on Friday.
It is part of an effort to show the displaced people that the local and international communities are "not abandoning them," said Bruno Vio of the U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
Some 95,000 people in Lebanon and 60,000 people in Israel have been displaced for nine months because of the daily exchanges of strikes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces at the border.
Most of the displaced people in Lebanon are staying with relatives and friends or in rented apartments.
Some 1,500 of those displaced are staying in three schools in Tyre, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the border,
"We understood how these people are tired and they need help," Vio said.
Known as UNIFIL, the mission was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion.
The U.N. expanded its mission following the 2006 war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, allowing peacekeepers to deploy along the Israeli border to help the Lebanese military extend its authority into the country’s south for the first time in decades.
Among those who have received medical care from UNIFIL is Mohammad Hammoud, who was displaced from the village of Yarin.
"They examined me and gave me medication. They treated me well," said Hammoud, who has diabetes.
AP video shot by Mohammad Zinaty
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