Spotting a rare foreigner in the southern Syrian city of Nawa, Khalil approaches with a business proposal: bring him a “very ...

For 20-odd days last autumn, Lt Col Alok Kumar Singh and his 70 fellow UN peacekeepers were trapped at their Unifil base in Shebaa village as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raged around them.

Area: 22,000 sq km. Population: 9.5m. Prime minister: Binyamin Netanyahu.