The United Nations is to set a board of inquiry to investigate the death of a Spanish peacekeeper during Israeli shelling in south Lebanon last week.

The United Nations is to set a board of inquiry to investigate the death of a Spanish peacekeeper during Israeli shelling in south Lebanon last week.

A senior UN official said on Wednesday that a fact-finding report by the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was already being prepared and its result would be presented to the UN Security Council in the coming days.

"We are straight away launching a board of inquiry to look into the wider aspects of all of this," said the official, who asked not to be named. "These were violations (of ceasefire accords), but we need to know more."

Spain has said the 36-year-old corporal was killed by Israeli fire on January 28.

Roman Oyarzun Marchesi, the Spanish envoy to the UN, had earlier asked for a full investigation into the death of the 36-year-old.

"It was because of this escalation of violence, and it came from the Israeli side," the Spanish envoy told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York City after a Security Council meeting on January 28.

The Israeli shelling in south Lebanon came after a group of Hezbollah fighters hit Israeli vehicles in Shebaa farms, killing an Israeli officer and soldier, in retaliation for the Israeli raid that killed six fighters of the Lebanese resistance in Syria’s Golan on January 18.

Following the Israeli shelling, the UN Security Council  condemned "in the strongest terms" the killing of the peacekeeper and said it awaited the results of a fact-finding report by the UN force in south Lebanon, UNIFIL, on the incident.