As part of UNIFIL’s endeavours to build and enhance capacity of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the mission’s naval peacekeepers have intensified in recent months training activities with the Lebanese Navy and the Air Force.
Since March, UNIFIL’s Maritime Task Force (MTF) organized 20 exercises with the LAF on hailing procedures and response measures during maritime violations, as well as landing procedures.
During one such exercise conducted this week, Lebanese Army vessel “Tabarja”, a helicopter as well as Navy and Air Force personnel joined UNIFIL frigate “Brandenburg”, boats and peacekeepers about 10 nautical miles off the coast of Beirut.
The exercise simulated interceptions at sea: LAF personnel landed from a helicopter onto the UNIFIL ship, acting as a suspicious merchant vessel, while UNIFIL naval peacekeepers from Germany boarded the Lebanese Army vessel, which played the role of a hostile ship.
Last week, peacekeepers held a vertical replenishment exercise at sea with Lebanese Air Force personnel. The drill involved a Lebanese Army helicopter, a UNIFIL helicopter, and a UNIFIL corvette, simulating the replenishment of a ship by air.
UNIFIL MTF resumed training activities with the LAF in March after a pause of more than five months due to the recent conflict.
In addition to participating in training exercises with UNIFIL naval peacekeepers, LAF Navy recently started to integrate fully into UNIFIL MTF, twice a month, to conduct maritime surveillance operations. The unit is assigned a maritime sector within Lebanon’s territorial waters, in which it patrols for 24 hours and identifies and reports passing merchant ships.
Deployed in October 2006 at the request of the Lebanese Government, the UNIFIL MTF helps the Lebanese Navy secure the country’s sea borders and other maritime entry points, to prevent the entry of unauthorized weapons and related items. The naval peacekeepers carry out maritime interdiction operations daily, in which they interrogate merchant vessels and refer any suspicious vessel to the LAF Navy for further inspection.
Since 2006, they have hailed more than 138,700 vessels and referred over 20,500 to the Lebanese Navy.