A French soldier passes away following an attack in Lebanon

(SeaPRwire) –   A second service member has died in the wake of last week’s incident

French President Emmanuel Macron has confirmed that a French soldier critically wounded in an attack targeting UN peacekeepers in Lebanon last week has succumbed to his injuries.

Per the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), another French peacekeeper was killed in the incident and two more were injured; their patrol came under small-arms fire in the village of Ghandourieh in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Macron shared that one of the wounded troops, Chief Corporal Anicet Girardin, who had been evacuated to France a day prior, had died.

The president extended his condolences to Girardin’s relatives and to the families of the other servicemen injured in the attack, which he attributed to the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.

Hezbollah stated in a Saturday statement that it “denies any connection to the incident,” calling for “caution in making judgments and assigning responsibilities” pending an investigation by the Lebanese military.

The group has been engaged in intense fighting with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Western Jerusalem launched a military incursion into southern Lebanon less than a week after the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28. Earlier in April, US President Donald Trump announced that the two sides had agreed to a ten-day truce, which is set to expire on Sunday.

According to authorities in Beirut, more than 2,300 people have been killed and over 1.2 million have been displaced amid the ground fighting and IDF airstrikes in Lebanon.

A total of three French troops have lost their lives in the ongoing Middle East conflict. One additional soldier died and several more were wounded in a drone strike on a French-Kurdish base in northern Iraq in mid-March.

Currently, approximately 700 French troops are deployed in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL mission, which comprises 7,505 peacekeepers from 47 nations.

Paris, which has long-standing political and economic ties with Beirut, has been stationing its peacekeepers in Lebanon since 1978. More than 160 French troops have been killed in the country since that time.