A senior United Nations official has told the Security Council that further violence between Israel and and Hezbollah in Lebanon risked igniting a far more damaging conflict.
“We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far,” UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told UN.
On Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk also told the Security Council that the attack on Hezbollah communications devices violated international law and could constitute a war crime.
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What happened in Lebanon?
As its war in Gaza nears one year old, Israel killed at least 14 people and wounded 66 in an air raid on the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday.
The Israeli military claimed that a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement were among the dead, and pledged to conduct a new military campaign until it secures the area around the Lebanese border.
Israel’s air raid followed two days of attacks in which Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands.
The previously sporadic cross-border fighting escalated back in October of 2023 when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Since then hundreds of people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, have been killed in the cross-border fighting, while tens of thousands have also been displaced on both sides of the border.
