GENEVA: The UN humanitarian chief voiced alarm Wednesday at the prospect of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza spreading to Lebanon, warning that it was “potentially apocalyptic.”
As the war in Gaza nears its tenth month, Israel’s top ally the United States has warned of the risk of a major conflict against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, following an escalation in cross-border fire.
Israel’s military said last week plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated,” prompting fresh threats from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian coordinator, told reporters in Geneva that he saw Lebanon as “the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints,” pointing to southern Lebanon in particular.
Griffiths said he had been discussing with colleagues in Jerusalem about the prospects of what might happen there.
“We are worried about the potential for further tragedy and deaths,” he said.
“It’s potentially apocalyptic.”
Griffiths, whose term finishes this week, warned that a war involving Lebanon “will draw in Syria... it will draw in others.”
And “it will of course have an impact on Gaza; of course it will have an impact on the West Bank.
“It’s very alarming,” he said.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,718 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry has said.
Since the war began, “Gaza has taught us a new level of tragedy and cruelty,” Griffiths said.
“But we are all worried that it may only be the beginning.”
He said the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and other aid agencies were preparing for a broader crisis.
“There is a lot of preparedness on the aid side,” he said. But the kind of preparedness needed was “political,” he stressed.
“The problem is stopping this war from getting worse.”
Spread of Mideast war to Lebanon ‘potentially apocalyptic’: UN aid chief
https://arab.news/zw4af
Spread of Mideast war to Lebanon ‘potentially apocalyptic’: UN aid chief
- Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian coordinator, told reporters in Geneva that he saw Lebanon as “the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints“
- “We are worried about the potential for further tragedy and deaths“
Fighting for third day in north Gaza as thousands displaced
A resurgence of fighting in the area comes months after Israel had declared the command structure of Hamas militants dismantled in northern Gaza
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Explosions, air strikes and gunfire rattled northern Gaza on Saturday, the third day of an Israeli military operation that has uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinians and compounded what the UN called “unbearable” living conditions in the territory.
An AFP correspondent reported ongoing explosions from the Shujaiya area near Gaza City, with a resident saying bodies were visible on the streets.
Israel’s military on Saturday said its operations were continuing in Shujaiya where fighting “above and below the ground” left a “large number” of militants dead.
A resurgence of fighting in the area comes months after Israel had declared the command structure of Hamas militants dismantled in northern Gaza.
Last Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down after almost nine months, but experts see a potentially prolonged next phase.
The Gaza war has also led to soaring tensions on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, leading Iran on Saturday to warn of an “obliterating” war if Israel attacked Lebanon.
The war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,834 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. It reported at least 69 deaths over the previous 48 hours.
Mohammed Harara, 30, said he and his family, young and old, felt as though they would become part of that toll.
He said they fled from their home in Shujaiya with nothing, “due to the bombardment by Israeli planes, tanks and drones” that they barely survived.
“We couldn’t carry anything from the house. We left the food, flour, canned goods, mattresses, and blankets,” Harara said.
Israel’s military on Friday said it was conducting “targeted raids” backed by air strikes against Hamas militants in the Shujaiya area.
The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “about 60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from the area this week.
AFPTV images on Saturday showed men moving belongings on a donkey cart. Some people were pushed in wheelchairs. Children walked with backpacks past piles of dusty debris.
“I saw a tank in front of the Shuhada mosque firing” at targets, said Abdelkareem Al-Mamluk. “There were martyrs in the street.”
On Friday Hamas and the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad both said they were fighting in Shujaiya.
Elsewhere in the coastal territory, the civil defense agency on Saturday said four bodies were pulled from an apartment after an Israeli strike in the central region.
Further south, in the Rafah area, witnesses reported dead and wounded after a new incursion by Israeli troops.
Tarek Qandeel, director of the medical center in Al-Maghazi, central Gaza, said the facility was seriously damaged in the bombing of a neighboring house, making it the latest Gaza medical facility affected by the war.
The United Nations, in a report on Friday that cited Gaza’s health ministry, said “about 70 percent of health infrastructure has been destroyed.”
Separately, a UN spokeswoman, Louise Wateridge, said by video-link that she had just returned to central Gaza after four weeks outside the territory.
“It’s really unbearable,” she said, describing a “significantly deteriorated” situation.
“There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food,” and people are returning to live in “empty shells” of buildings.
In the absence of bathrooms they are “relieving themselves anywhere they can,” Wateridge said.
The UN says most of Gaza’s population is displaced, but fallout from the war has also uprooted people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border, where Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Israeli forces have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire.
Such exchanges have escalated this month, alongside bellicose rhetoric from both sides.
Israel’s military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been “approved and validated,” prompting Hezbollah to respond that none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict.
In a post Saturday on social media, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said it “deems as psychological warfare” Israeli threats to “attack” Lebanon.
But it added such a move would lead to an “obliterating” war that could involve “all resistance fronts,” a reference to Iran-backed groups in the region.
Among those are Yemen’s Houthi militants, who have for months been targeting international shipping in the Red Sea area. The Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians.
On Friday the Houthis claimed a “direct hit” on a tanker in the Red Sea but a maritime security agency run by Britain’s Royal Navy reported no damage.
The US Navy has retaliated against Houthi targets for such attacks, and on Friday the US military said its forces had destroyed seven drones and a control station vehicle in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen over the previous day.
Iran warns Israel of ‘obliterating’ war if Lebanon attacked
- Comment comes amid fears of a wider regional war involving Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement
TEHRAN: Iran on Saturday warned that “all Resistance Fronts,” a grouping of Iran and its regional allies, would confront Israel if it attacks Lebanon.
The comment from Iran’s mission to New York comes with fears of a wider regional war involving Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.
Such exchanges have escalated this month, alongside bellicose rhetoric from both sides. Israel’s military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been “approved and validated,” prompting Hezbollah to respond that none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict.
In a post on social media platform X, the Iranian mission said it “deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime’s propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon.”
But, it added, “should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue. All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.”
The war in Gaza began in October when Hamas Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel.
Iran, which backs Hamas, has praised the attack as a success but has denied any involvement.
Alongside Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel, Iran-backed rebels in Yemen have repeatedly struck commercial ships in the Red Sea area in what they say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.
Iran also backs other groups in the region.
The Islamic republic has not recognized Israel since the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran’s United States-backed shah.
Fears of regional war also soared in April, after an air strike that levelled Iran’s consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
Iran hit back with an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13-14.
Iran’s state media later reported explosions in the central province of Isfahan as US media quoted American officials saying Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes on its arch-rival.
Tehran downplayed the reported Israeli raid.
Gazans living in ‘unbearable’ conditions: UNRWA
- Louise Wateridge: ‘Today, it has to be the worst it’s ever been. I don’t doubt that tomorrow again will be the worst it’s ever been’
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gazans are forced to live in bombed-out buildings or camp next to giant piles of trash, a United Nations spokeswoman said Friday, denouncing the “unbearable” conditions in the besieged territory.
Louise Wateridge from UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, described the “extremely dire” living conditions in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s really unbearable,” she told reporters in Geneva, via video-link from central Gaza.
Wateridge, who returned Wednesday after four weeks outside the territory, said that even in that time the situation had “significantly deteriorated.”
“Today, it has to be the worst it’s ever been. I don’t doubt that tomorrow again will be the worst it’s ever been,” she said.
Nearly nine months into the war between Israel and Hamas, Wateridge said the Gaza Strip had been “destroyed.”
She said she had been “shocked” on returning to Khan Yunis in central Gaza.
“The buildings are skeletons, if at all. Everything is rubble,” she said.
“And yet people are living there again.
“There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food. And now, people are living back in these buildings that are empty shells,” with sheets covering the gaps left by blown-out walls.
With no bathrooms, “people are relieving themselves anywhere they can.”
Meanwhile, the health ministry in Gaza said Saturday that at least 37,834 people have been killed during nearly nine months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes at least 69 deaths over the past 48 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 86,858 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.
Five Daesh bombs found hidden in iconic Iraq mosque: UN agency
- Iraq’s army accused Daesh of planting explosives at the site and blowing it up
- UNESCO has been working to restore the site and other architectural heritage in the city
MOSUL: The United Nations said they discovered five bombs in a wall of Mosul’s iconic Al-Nuri mosque, planted years ago by the Daesh group, during restoration work in the northern Iraqi city.
Five “large-scale explosive devices, designed to trigger a massive destruction of the site,” were found in the southern wall of the prayer hall on Tuesday by the UNESCO team working at the site, a representative for the agency told AFP late Friday.
Mosul’s Al-Nuri mosque and the adjacent leaning minaret nicknamed Al-Hadba or the “hunchback,” which dates from the 12th century, were destroyed during the battle to retake the city from Daesh.
Iraq’s army accused Daesh, which occupied the city for three years, of planting explosives at the site and blowing it up.
UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, has been working to restore the site and other architectural heritage in the city, much of it reduced to rubble in the battle to retake the city in 2017.
“The Iraqi armed forces immediately secured the area and the situation is now fully under control,” UNESCO added.
One bomb was removed, but four others “remain connected to each other” and are expected to be cleared in the coming days, it said.
“These explosive devices were hidden inside a wall, which was specially rebuilt around them: it explains why they could not be discovered when the site was cleared by Iraqi forces” in 2020, the agency said.
Iraqi General Tahseen Al-Khafaji, spokesperson for the Joint Operations Command of various Iraqi forces, confirmed the discovery of “several explosive devices from Daesh jihadists in Al-Nuri mosque.”
It was from Al-Nuri mosque that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the then-leader of Daesh, proclaimed the establishment of the group’s “caliphate” in July 2014.
The jihadists took over large swathes of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria which they ruled with brutality.
Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition drove Daesh out of Mosul in 2017.
Khamenei protege, sole moderate neck and neck in Iran presidential race
- More than 14 million votes have been counted so far from Friday’s vote
- Some insiders say turnout around 40%, lower than expected by clerical rulers
DUBAI: A low-key moderate and a protege of Iran’s supreme leader are neck-and-neck in the vote count in snap presidential elections marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and social restrictions.
More than 14 million votes have been counted so far from Friday’s vote, of which the sole moderate candidate Massoud Pezeshkian had won over 5.9 million votes and his hard-line challenger former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili over 5.5 million, provisional results by the interior ministry showed.
Some insiders said the turnout was around 40 percent, lower than expected by Iran’s clerical rulers, while witnesses said that polling stations in Tehran and some other cities were not crowded.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said a run-off election was “very likely” to pick the next president following the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.
If no candidate wins at least 50 percent plus one vote from all ballots cast, including blank votes, a run-off between the top two candidates is held on the first Friday after the result is declared.
The election coincides with escalating regional tension due to the war between Israel and Iranian allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as increased Western pressure on Iran over its fast-advancing nuclear program.
While the election is unlikely to bring a major shift in the Islamic Republic’s policies, its outcome could influence the succession to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, in power since 1989.
The clerical establishment sought a high turnout to offset a legitimacy crisis fueled by public discontent over economic hardship and curbs on political and social freedom.
The next president is not expected to usher in any major policy shift on Iran’s nuclear program or support for militia groups across the Middle East, since Khamenei calls all the shots on top state matters.
However, the president runs the government day-to-day and can influence the tone of Iran’s foreign and domestic policy.
Pezeshkian’s views offer a contrast to those of Jalili, advocating detente with the West, economic reform, social liberalization and political pluralism.
A staunch anti-Westerner, Jalili’s win would signal the possibility of an even more antagonistic turn in the Islamic Republic’s foreign and domestic policy, analysts said.
LIMITED CHOICES
The election was a contest among a tightly controlled group of three hard-line candidates and one low-profile moderate loyal to the supreme leader. A hard-line watchdog body approved only six from an initial pool of 80 and two hard-line candidates subsequently dropped out.
“Based on unconfirmed reports, the election is very likely heading to a second round ... Jalili and Pezeshkian will compete in a run-off election,” Tasnim reported.
Critics of the clerical establishment say that low turnouts in recent years show the system’s legitimacy has eroded. Turnout was 48 percent in the 2021 presidential election and a record low of 41 percent of people voted in a parliamentary election in March.
All candidates have vowed to revive the flagging economy, beset by mismanagement, state corruption and sanctions re-imposed since 2018, after the US ditched Tehran’s nuclear pact.
“I think Jalili is the only candidate who raised the issue of justice, fighting corruption and giving value to the poor. ... Most importantly, he does not link Iran’s foreign policy to the nuclear deal,” said Farzan, a 45-year-old artist in the city of Karaj.
DIVIDED VOTERS
Pezeshkian, faithful to Iran’s theocratic rule, is backed by the reformist faction that has largely been sidelined in Iran in recent years.
“We will respect the hijab law, but there should never be any intrusive or inhumane behavior toward women,” Pezeshkian said after casting his vote.
He was referring to the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in 2022 while in morality police custody for allegedly violating the mandatory Islamic dress code.
The unrest sparked by Amini’s death spiraled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran’s clerical rulers in years.
Pezeshkian attempted to revive the enthusiasm of reform-minded voters who have largely stayed away from the polls for the last four years as a mostly youthful population chafes at political and social curbs. He could also benefit from his rivals’ failure to consolidate the hard-line vote.
In the past few weeks, Iranians have made wide use of the hashtag #ElectionCircus on X, with some activists at home and abroad calling for a boycott, saying a high turnout would only serve to legitimize the Islamic Republic.
