UN 'extremely concerned' as Mideast conflict moves to new level

AFP , Monday 23 Sep 2024

The United Nations voiced alarm Monday at the escalating Israeli attacks on Lebanon, warning that actions and rhetoric were catapulting the Mideast conflict "to another level".

Lebanon
Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam in Marjeyoun. AFP

 

"We are extremely concerned, deeply worried about the escalation in Lebanon," Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told AFP.

"The attacks that we saw on the communication devices, the pagers, followed by rocket attacks and rocket fire being exchanged on both sides ... marks a real escalation," she said.

"What we've been warning about all along, the regional spillover of the conflict, it appears that both the actions and the rhetoric of the parties to the conflict is taking the conflict to another level."

After nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, the strikes since the weekend are the most intense since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza.

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south killed 182 people and wounded more than 727 others on Monday including children, while Lebanese official media said people were receiving Israeli phone warnings telling them to move away.

Israel meanwhile said more than 300 sites had been targeted on Monday in dozens of strikes.

That came after at least 39 people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded last week when hand-held communications devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated across Lebanon. Hezbollah has blamed Israel, which has not commented.

On Friday the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the Security Council the attack on communications devices violated international law and could constitute a war crime.

Without attributing the attack on the communications devices, Shamdasani stressed that "it is a war crime to commit violence that is intended to spread terror among civilians".

"The simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether they are civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge of where these people will be ... this is not acceptable under international law."

Shamdasani highlighted the calls from across the international community "pleading for a deescalation".

"But instead of a deescalation, what we have seen ... is further rhetoric with further plans of an escalation," she said. "This needs to stop."

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