A total of 160 officers and men of the first echelon of the 10th Chinese peacekeeping engineer battalion to Lebanon and the 9th peacekeeping medical detachment arrived at the Beirut International Airport on a chartered plane of the United Nations (UN) on the night of June 19, 2012 and hurried to the mission area in southern Lebanon by road at the very night, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
The 10th Chinese peacekeeping engineering battalion is mainly composed of an engineer regiment of a group army under the Chengdu Military Area Command (MAC) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) stationed in Yunnan Province. It has four companies under its command, namely, the mine-clearing and explosive-removing company, the engineering construction company, the engineering maintenance company and the comprehensive support company.
As a part of the UN Peacekeeping Interim Force in Southern Lebanon, the battalion will be deployed in the border areas in southern Lebanon adjoining Israel to carry out such tasks assigned by the UN as clearing mines and removing explosives, carrying out engineering construction and maintenance as well as providing humanitarian aid.
The 9th peacekeeping medical detachment comes from the Kunming General Hospital of the Chengdu MAC of the Chinese PLA. It is mainly responsible for treating and curing the sick and the wounded and preventing epidemics. Its mission in Lebanon will last for eight months.
At the request of the UN, China has dispatched nine batches of peacekeeping engineer battalions and eight batches of peacekeeping medical detachments with nearly 3,000 peacekeepers/times to Lebanon since the year 2006.
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