While trying to fulfill their mandate to keep the peace, UN soldiers deployed along Lebanon’s border with Israel during the worst hostilities there in nearly 20 years have another urgent concern: keeping their own forces safe, Reuters reports.

“I’ve got to maintain force protection as a priority while also carrying out the mission,” said Lieutenant Colonel Stephen MacEoin, battalion commander of the Irish and Polish soldiers stationed at Camp Shamrock in the village of Tiri, near Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.

MacEoin said he hoped the truce in Gaza between Hamas and Israel would be extended, as it was civilians “who suffer most” from conflict, be it in Lebanon or Gaza, and the violence in Gaza was linked to the situation in southern Lebanon.

“The concerns of the mission are that, after so many weeks of exchanges of fire, now we have a truce, a moment of calm, but that intensive changes of fire can trigger a much wider cycle of conflict,” said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti.

“This is the real warning and danger that everyone is facing not only in the south but in the region.”