In his last act as Israeli military liaison officer, Brig Gen Erez Gerstein formally apologised for injuries to two Irish soldiers by mortars fired by troops under his control last month.
Three days after the liaison meeting at the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura the brigadier general was killed by a roadside landmine planted by Hizbullah guerrillas in Israeli-occupied Lebanon.
His killing, the seventh Israeli military death in less than a week, almost pitched the region back into full-scale military conflict.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon is still trying to get details of the Israeli air strikes in Lebanon but yesterday it said they appeared to have been restricted to guerrilla targets and did not deliberately target civilians.
Similarly, Hizbullah's military wing, the Islamic Resistance, was said to have also avoided targeting civilian centres in northern Israel. Two Katushya rockets were fired from an unknown location into northern Israel the day Brig Gen Gerstein was killed last Sunday week. But UN sources said they were thought to have been fired by a splinter Palestinian group with little support in the area.
There was some shelling in the Irish UN Battalion area in the southern Lebanon interior yesterday and an Israeli jet fired an airto-ground missile. This was described as the type of activity that goes on daily here. No casualties were reported.
The UNIFIL spokesman, Mr Timor Goksell, who has been an outspoken critic of Israeli policy in Lebanon, yesterday paid tribute to Brig Gen Gerstein.
He said Brig Gen Gerstein told the UN the attack on the Irish post in Haddatah in which Cpl Noel Roche and Pte John Flaherty narrowly escaped death on February 7th was carried out by local Israeli-backed militia from the South Lebanon Army (SLA).
He said Brig Gen Gerstein "gave his profuse apologies for the shelling of the Irish. He said he was very, very sorry. The incident had been investigated by the (Israeli) Northern Command. He said `We can't control these guys'.
"We don't do lunches here but we had a lunch for him. He had a special place for us," he said.
The two soldiers injured in the SLA mortar attack on Haddatah returned to duties last week having both made full recoveries. They were on duty yesterday when four shells were fired from Israeli positions at a hill overlooking the village. The area was declared quiet shortly afterwards.
UN sources said that while Israel remained unhappy that it was prevented from carrying out major retaliation for Brig Gen Herstein's killing, it was anticipated that both international and domestic opposition to Israel's continued occupation of south Lebanon was hindering its military from escalating the conflict.