Some form of ongoing UN presence might continue after a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon ends later this year, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said Thursday.

Lacroix told reporters in Geneva that he was consulting with all parties about the options after its mandate formally stops at the end of December and will make formal recommendations to the Security Council by June.

“They’re [the Lebanese] very clear that they would want to keep a UN presence,” he said. “We’re looking at a presence that would probably be smaller than UNIFIL.”

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), first deployed in 1978, has more than 7,000 peacekeepers from 47 nations. It has reported five of them killed in recent weeks, three from Indonesia and two from France, amid the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

France has blamed the Iran-backed terror group for killing its two soldiers, while a preliminary UN probe found one Indonesian peacekeeper was killed by Israeli tank fire, and the two others were killed by an improvised explosive device likely planted by Hezbollah.

UNIFIL’s mandate currently includes monitoring a ceasefire, supporting the Lebanese army in its deployment into the south, and helping it enforce a prohibition of illegal arms there.

Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when........

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