UN force vows to pursue Lebanon task despite bomb

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon, June 25 (Reuters) UN peacekeepers will pursue their mission in Lebanon despite a car bomb blast that killed six members of a Spanish battalion and wounded two, the UNIFIL force's commander said today.

The explosion that hit a UNIFIL patrol yesterday was the first deadly attack on the UN force since it was expanded to stabilise south Lebanon after last year's war between Israel and Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas.

''It's not an attack against Lebanon and UNIFIL only, but against the stability of the region. This attack has made UNIFIL more committed to fulfil its mission in southern Lebanon,'' Major-General Claudio Graziano, who commands the 13,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon, said in a statement.

The bombing presents another challenge to the Western-backed Beirut government, locked in a paralysing political conflict with the Hezbollah-led opposition and shaken by a series of bombings, as well as battles with al Qaeda-inspired militants.

Spanish Defence Minister Jose Antonio Alonso flew to Lebanon to collect the bodies of the soldiers killed when the bomb blew up near their armoured vehicles on a road between the towns of Khiyam and Marjayoun, near the Israeli border.

The Lebanese army kept the road closed today while investigators worked. Witnesses said UNIFIL had visibly reduced its patrols elsewhere in the south.

Alonso attended a religious ceremony for the slain soldiers at the Spanish contingent's base in Marjayoun. His helicopter earlier circled three times over the bomb scene, witnesses said.

The attack, which Hezbollah condemned, occurred even though UNIFIL had gone on higher alert after the Lebanese army began fighting Sunni Islamist militants in the north last month.

No group has claimed responsibility, but the Fatah al-Islam group battling the army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared had previously accused UNIFIL of bombarding the camp.

''We are working on the theory of a terrorist attack,'' Alonso said in Madrid a few hours after the bomb exploded. ''In the last few weeks there have been many incidents which have destabilised Lebanon. We were on high alert and we had stepped up security.'' He said the dead included three Colombians serving in the Spanish army.

There were conflicting reports as to whether the car bomb was detonated by remote control or by a suicide driver.

UNIFIL, operating alongside about 15,000 Lebanese troops sent to the south after the July-August war ended, has reported few problems with Hezbollah, which keeps its arms out of sight.

The peacekeepers have focused more on the potential threat from Sunni militants. Last year, al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri called for attacks on UNIFIL.

Lebanese and foreign politicians have united in condemning the car bombing against the 1,100-strong Spanish contingent.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem called his Spanish counterpart and condemned the attack, Syria's news agency said.

Before yesterday's attack, UNIFIL had suffered 260 fatalities since it was set up after a 1978 Israeli invasion.

REUTERS SKB VV1433