TYRE, Lebanon (AP) - Hundreds of Spanish troops splashed ashore Friday to join a U.N. peacekeeping force enforcing a cease-fire in southern Lebanon's tense border region, and the force's commander lashed out at Beirut over delays in helping him deploy reinforcements. About 480 Spanish marines in amphibious vehicles arrived on a popular tourist beach in the city of Tyre, after offloading from two Spanish warships off the Lebanese coast. Another 90 were set to arrive Saturday.
The marines, like French and Italian troops who arrived recently, are joining the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon as it expands from 2,000 soldiers to 15,000 under a new Security Council resolution.
In an interview published Friday in the French daily La Croix, UNIFIL commander Gen. Alain Pellegrini said he was "unable to now find enough terrain" to accommodate the incoming troops.
"I am surely going to be required to delay the arrival of some contingents because I can't put them up," he was quoted as saying.
"I remind Lebanese authorities that they must offer us ground, which, for the moment, they haven't done," Pellegrini added. "We are here at their request, and the least they could do is help us."
A U.N. spokesman, Alexander Ivanko, softened the criticism of the Lebanese government, saying that the deployment was a "huge logistical effort" because of the need to secure land and clear land mines.
Ivanko said some Italian troops have been delayed from fanning out from their staging ground in Jabal Maroun, which was originally set to begin last week.
A senior Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said it was taking time to arrange logistics for the large number of troops. He said the issue was being "dealt with as quickly as possible."
"There is large-scale destruction in the south. Some villages are totally destroyed and it is a difficult task to prepare the grounds for all the peacekeepers. Some of them need to have large bases and you need to arrange rent leases with residents of the area and other such issues," he told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian military, initially slated to send 1,000 peacekeepers to Lebanon at the end of this month, said Friday that it would postpone its deployment until late October.
"The government of Lebanon is so busy organizing (the peacekeepers) who are already there, there needed to be a readjustment of our arrival date," Indonesian military spokesman Admiral Mohamad Sunarto said.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and was quick to offer troops to any peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, but Israel initially objected because Jakarta does not have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
Israel, which has been gradually pulling its forces out as U.N. soldiers fan out across the south, promised to withdraw its troops by around Sept. 22 after the U.N. said the peacekeeping contingent should reach 5,000 around mid-September.
The U.N. force will patrol a buffer zone in south Lebanon to prevent hostilities from breaking out again between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
Spain will be the third largest contributor to the U.N. force, bringing a total of about 1,100 troops by October. France, Italy, Ghana and India currently have the largest contingents in UNIFIL.
The 34-day war, which ended in a U.N.-brokered cease-fire on Aug. 14, killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Lebanese civilians.
