BEIRUT — Two UN peacekeepers were wounded Saturday when an Israeli airstrike hit near their border post in southern Lebanon, a spokesman said.

The two soldiers from the Indian battalion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon were "moderately wounded as a result of the impact of an aerial bomb that hit in the vicinity" of their position in the borded village of Adaisseh, UNIFIL spokesman Milos Strugar said.

The two soldiers were evacuated to a UNIFIL hospital in the town of Ibl Saqi.

Strugar said the observation tower inside the position was damaged.

Four unarmed officers with the UN observer force in south Lebanon were killed in an Israeli airstrike that destroyed their bunker in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. The deaths sparked an angry spat between the world body and Israel when UN chief Kofi Annan said the hit appeared intentional, which Israel denied.

The UN has a 2,000-member peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, sent to the area since 1978. The lightly armed force has often come under fire in the last 28 years from all sides although its positions along the frontier are clearly marked with the UN initials in black and painted in white, with the blue UN flags fluttering.

The UN force has been largely ineffective and its task in recent years is to patrol, monitor and report violations of the Blue Line, the UN-demarcated border line between Lebanon and Israel.

The latest attack comes as the United States, Britain and other Western nations were considering sending an international force to southern Lebanon as part of a deal to stop the 18-day fighting between Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel.

Earlier Saturday, a top UN official said the killing of the four unarmed UN military observers may discourage countries from contributing to a multinational force to stabilize the troubled region.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said the deaths are a "very serious threat to the whole concept of neutral peacekeeping."

Though Malloch Brown said he accepted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's statement expressing "deep regret" for the deaths, he continued to harbour "serious concerns" about the actions of the Israeli military.