The UN humanitarian chief warned on Wednesday that the spread of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Lebanon would be “potentially apocalyptic” as bombings and fighting continue in the Palestinian territory. .
“I see this as the spark that will ignite the powder… It is potentially apocalyptic,” Martin Griffiths warned in Geneva, saying he feared the “unforeseeable” consequences of a conflict that spread to Lebanon.
The war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, has led to a surge in violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where there are almost daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah Lebanese, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, and the Israeli army.
The United States, Israel’s main ally, has also warned of the risks of the war expanding.
A conflict involving Lebanon “will win Syria… will win the other” territories in the region, said Griffiths, whose term ends at the end of the month. “It will obviously have consequences in Gaza” and “an impact on the West Bank”, occupied by Israel, he added.
Israeli bombardments continued on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, where according to witnesses, fighting raged in the west of Rafah, a town in the south of the territory where the army launched a ground offensive on May 7.
In the north, the Civil Defense said three children and a woman were killed in a strike in Beit Lahia. Tank fire was reported in Gaza City.
A Civil Defense official said rescuers recovered 15 bodies from “various areas of Rafah city.” The spokesperson for this agency, Mahmoud Bassal, however affirmed that the bombings were less intense on Wednesday.
On the Israeli-Lebanese border, an escalation last week in attacks on both sides and threats exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah have raised fears of a new war.
“A war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with disastrous consequences for the Middle East,” warned US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin while receiving his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in Washington on Tuesday .
“We are working closely to reach an agreement, but we also need to prepare for all possible scenarios,” Gallant said.
On June 19, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, an all-powerful Islamist movement in Lebanon, warned that “no place” in Israel would be spared from his movement’s missiles, the day after an army announcement Israeli statement that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” had been “validated”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that the “intense” phase of fighting was coming to an end in the Gaza Strip and said that afterward, Israel could “redeploy some forces towards the north”, on the border with the Lebanon, “for defensive purposes.”
“It seems that Israel, which devastated Gaza, is now setting its sights on Lebanon. We see that Western powers support Israel behind the scenes,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused on Wednesday.
Speaking of an “unpredictable situation”, Canada called on its nationals to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.
Hezbollah opened the front with Israel in support of Hamas the day after the attack carried out by the Palestinian movement on October 7 in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to a count from AFP established from official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted in the attack, 116 are still being held hostage in Gaza, 42 of whom are dead, according to the army.
In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive on the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 37,718 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-led government’s Health Ministry.
By announcing that the “intense” phase of the fighting, particularly in Rafah, was “about to end,” Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed that the war would continue against Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and considered a terrorist organization. by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
The goal, according to Mr. Netanyahu, is “to recover the hostages” and “to uproot the Hamas regime.”
The war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, besieged by Israel, where there is a “high and sustained risk” of famine, according to a report released Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), on Tuesday. which the UN agencies are based on.
According to the report, 495,000 people are suffering from hunger at “catastrophic” levels.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNRWA), “every day, 10 children lose one or both legs on average” in Gaza. “Ten a day means about 2,000 children after more than 260 days of this brutal war,” the agency said.
Humanitarian workers are not spared. Médecins sans Frontières claimed on his work “.
The army confirmed that it had killed Fadi al-Wadiya, describing him as a “major operative” of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied with Hamas.
