On Friday, November 23, Defense Minister Mario Kunasek bid farewell to 77 soldiers for the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon at a ceremony in the Wallenstein barracks of the foreign operations base in Götzendorf.
“As Minister of Defense and a former non-commissioned officer who was deployed abroad myself, I would like to sincerely thank our soldiers for this important service. I wish them every happiness and an accident-free deployment,” said Minister Kunasek. The Austrian Armed Forces have been participating in the “United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon” (UNIFIL) mission with a logistics unit since November 2011. The approximately 180 Austrian soldiers use more than one hundred vehicles to transport personnel and equipment and recover damaged vehicles. They also operate the material store and the camp fire department of the peacekeeping forces at the headquarters of the UN mission. This is located in Naquora in the southwest of Lebanon, around six kilometers from the Israeli border. The main task of the approximately 10,500 UNIFIL soldiers from 41 nations is to monitor the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. To this end, they carry out patrols, operate checkpoints and work closely with the Lebanese security forces.
