World leaders expressed alarm Tuesday over the prospect of a wider war after Lebanon suffered its deadliest day in two decades after Israeli air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds.
After nearly a year of cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted, Israeli bombardment on Monday killed 558 people in Lebanon, including 50 children, according to the country’s health ministry.
The toll, the highest since Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah went to war in mid-2006, raised fears of an all-out conflict engulfing the Middle East.
“Lebanon is at the brink,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said before the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“Gaza is a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it,” he said, calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territories. “Look no further than Lebanon.”
Guterres is “gravely alarmed by the escalating situation… and the large number of civilian casualties, including children and women”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes yesterday and overnight, and the numbers continue to grow,” UN refugee agency spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said in Geneva.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, urged against any Israeli ground invasion targeting Hezbollah.
“We obviously do not believe that a ground invasion of Lebanon is going to contribute to reducing tensions in the region, to preventing an escalatory spiral of violence,” a senior US official said Monday on condition of anonymity.
“We are almost in a full-fledged war,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday.
“We’re seeing more military strikes, more damage, more collateral damage, more victims… Everybody has to put all their capacity to stop this,” he said.
“We must not allow Lebanon to become another Gaza at the hands of Israel,” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told CNN when asked if Tehran would use its influence with Hezbollah to urge restraint.
“Hezbollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by Western countries, by European countries and the United States,” he said.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi said: “We pay close attention to developments in the region, especially the recent explosion of communications equipment in Lebanon, and firmly oppose indiscriminate attacks against civilians.”
Later Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Beijing was “deeply shocked by the relevant military actions that have caused a large number of casualties”.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is headquartered in the Saudi city of Jeddah, denounced the strikes as “an extension of ongoing Israeli war crimes and a violation of international law” and UN resolutions.
The OIC said it held Israel “fully responsible for this dangerous escalation, which threatens the security and stability of the entire region”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II called on the international community to take action to stop the “danger of Israeli escalation” in Lebanon and “protect innocent civilians… before the region is dragged into a comprehensive regional war”.
In a phone call with the Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the king said that “stopping the escalation in the region begins with an immediate end to the war on Gaza”, according to a palace statement.
In a statement Tuesday, Qatar “condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli aggression on Lebanon”.
A key mediator in talks on reaching a Gaza truce, Qatar said the escalation “puts the region on the brink of the abyss and exposes it to more tensions”.
Russia called the strikes “an event that is potentially very dangerous”, risking the expansion of the conflict and “complete destabilisation of the region”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“Of course that causes us extreme concern and worry,” Peskov said.
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AFP
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