UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah must not condemn Lebanon to the same fate as Gaza, the Palestinian territory decimated by years of conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gaza model must not be replicated in Lebanon,\u201d Guterres told reporters, adding that the wider war in the Middle East is \u201cout of control,\u201d as the United States, Israel and Iran have carried out strikes for more than three weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross the region, and far beyond, civilians are enduring serious harm and living under profound insecurity. I witnessed some of these consequences firsthand during my recent visit to Lebanon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0UN chief warns Iran war ‘out of control,’ world staring down barrel of wider conflict<\/p>\n
\u201cThere, too, the war must stop. Hezbollah must stop launching attacks into Israel. And Israel must stop its military operations and strikes in Lebanon, which are hitting civilians the hardest.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early March, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs \u2014 a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah \u2014 with the same devastation that Israel has inflicted on Gaza in its war against militant group Hamas.<\/p>\n
Beyond Lebanon, Guterres voiced alarm at the wider regional war triggered by US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February that killed the country\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0Iran ‘more resilient’ in war with US than anyone expected: ex-British spy chief<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conflict has broken past the limits even leaders thought imaginable,\u201d he said. \u201cThe world is staring down the barrel of a wider war, a rising tide of human suffering, and a deeper global economic shock. This has gone too far.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN chief also announced the appointment of French diplomat Jean Arnault as his special envoy to lead UN efforts regarding the conflict and its consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that fighting between Israel and Hezbollah must not condemn Lebanon to the same fate as Gaza, the Palestinian territory decimated by years of conflict. \u201cThe Gaza model must not be replicated in Lebanon,\u201d Guterres told reporters, adding that the wider war in the Middle East is \u201cout of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2818,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}