The UN Security Council will meet urgently on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Lebanon, where Israeli bombings in recent days have killed around 600 people, the Slovenian presidency of the body announced this Tuesday.
The meeting requested by France will take place on Wednesday at 6:00 pm (11:00 pm in Lisbon), with the presence of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said the same source.
“At this moment, I am thinking about the Lebanese people, while the Israeli attacks have just caused hundreds of civilian victims, including dozens of children”, said on Monday the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot, who was speaking at the UN general assembly .
In recent days, the Israeli army carried out attacks in several parts of southern and eastern Lebanonand also in the capital, Beirut, in which around 600 people were killed and more than a thousand were injured. Israeli authorities claimed to have eliminated several Hezbollah commanders.
This new phase of the conflict, with a dramatic increase in tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, was triggered by two days of simultaneous explosions of the group’s communication devices, first ‘pagers’, then ‘walkie-talkies’ – on September 17th and 18th – attacks attributed to Israel left around 40 dead and 3,000 injured, according to the most recent report released by the Lebanese authorities.
For more than 11 months, Israeli forces and Hezbollah have been involved in intense crossfire along the border between Lebanon and Israel, in the worst clashes since the 2006 war, which intensified sharply this summer following an attack by pro militia. -Iranian woman who killed 12 children in the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.
Tensions in the Middle East region increased after the attack on October 7, 2023 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli territory, which killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, and 251 hostages, and in retaliation for which the Israeli Army started a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has already left at least 41,467 dead and 95,900 injured, in addition to more than 10,000 missing, according to figures from the local Ministry of Health, which the UN considers reliable.
From Lebanon, Hezbollah joined the attacks against Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinian population, thus opening a second battle front for Israel, on its northern border, making the international community fear the spread of the conflict to the entire Middle East. East.
