A Serbian soldier has been killed in southern Lebanon while serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission. Senior Sergeant Milovan Jovanović died when mortar shells landed on a UNIFIL position in the Dibin area. Two other peacekeepers were also wounded. Another coffin coming home from a mission that was meant to carry peace, not casualties.

The Israeli military quickly issued a statement and pointed the finger at Hezbollah. „Hezbollah fired several mortar shells that landed on a UNIFIL forces' position in the Dibin area - killing a UN member and wounding two others. Analysis of the firing trajectory clearly shows that the terrorist organisation Hezbollah carried out the fire,” the statement read. When one side points at the other so quickly, it's worth asking - who independently confirmed the trajectory, other than the one announcing it?

UNIFIL is a mission set up precisely to prevent incidents like this - international soldiers between the warring sides, on the region's most unstable border. And the result is that the peacekeepers themselves become a target. Jovanović was part of those forces, on a terrain where the shells don't ask each night under whose flag the base stands.

For the Balkans, this isn't distant news. A Serbian soldier died on a foreign border, in a conflict that isn't ours, under the flag of an organisation whose main task is to protect exactly such people. How many missions like this have we sent „for peace” over the years, and how many coffins came back? The question isn't rhetorical for Jovanović's family - for them, the mission has just ended in the worst possible way.