The man suspected of causing the deaths of four Irish soldiers in a highway accident on Monday has been arrested by the Lebanese army and could be charged with negligence or manslaughter.
Mr Mohammed Mahmoud Wehbe is being held at Lebanese Military Police headquarters in East Beirut while the investigation continues. The UNIFIL vehicle carrying Irish soldiers went out of control and overturned after skidding on fuel which had leaked from Mr Wehbe's truck.
The same oil slick caused a second fatal accident later on Monday, when a car also spun and crashed, killing Mr Haithem Khalifeh instantly, and critically injuring Mr Ali Daher.
Because the Lebanese army is UNIFIL's immediate interlocutor, the driver of the faulty fuel truck is under the jurisdiction of Lebanon's military court, headed by Judge Nasri Lahoud. He is the brother of President Emile Lahoud, an army general who has said he wants a speedy and fair conclusion to the investigation into the Irish tragedy.
Both Mr Lahoud and the Prime Minister, Mr Selim elHoss, have sent condolences to the Irish Battalion and to UNIFIL. "We have never had so much interest in UNIFIL casualties before," Mr Timor Goksel, the UNIFIL spokesman, said. "I doubt [Mr Wehbe] will be let off easily because there is so much interest in the case."
The bodies of the four soldiers killed on Monday have been transferred to Tel Aviv for post-mortem examinations. Cmdt. Tony Kiely of the Irish Battalion said they would probably be flown back to Ireland on Friday.
The Army has asked a close friend of Pte Edward O'Neill, who underwent surgery at Beirut's Sacre Coeur Hospital on Monday night, to stay with him 24 hours a day. Pte O'Neill is in stable condition but will need further surgery.
Irish colleagues of Sgt Celsus Whyte and Pte John Keohane have been encouraged to visit them at the Hammoud Hospital in Sidon. Both men are expected to be released within a few days.
Lebanon's two Western language newspapers, L'Orient Le Jour and the Daily Star, reacted with outrage to Monday's accidents. "Death in a puddle of diesel," said L'Orient's inch-high front page headline.
"Carelessness in lorry inspection and the merely symbolic presence of Interior Security Forces on the ground have claimed more road victims," L'Orient continued, demanding to know when other defective vehicles "on our roads, ready to sow death" would be taken out of circulation.
But Lebanon's main Arabic language papers, An Nahar and As Safir, treated the deaths of the Irish peacekeepers as a routine accident and put it on page 5.
As Safir's text noted that UNIFIL had requested that no one take photographs of the dead soldiers - and on the same page it published a gruesome photograph of the naked torso of one of the Irish soldiers wrapped in a blood-drenched blanket.
"I would expect that they would be allowed the respect the dead deserve," Cmdt Kiely said.
