Middle East conflagration: nearly 500 dead after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, France requests an emergency meeting

Des volontaires aident un homme âgé alors que des personnes qui ont fui les villages du sud du Liban arrivent dans un abri de fortune dans un établissement d'enseignement à Beyrouth, au Liban, le 23 septembre 2024.. MAXPPP – WAEL HAMZEH

As Israeli strikes on Lebanon have left nearly 500 dead, France has requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Monday that he had requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, as Israeli strikes have left hundreds dead in Lebanon.

“France once again calls on the parties and those who support them to de-escalate and avoid a regional conflagration that would be devastating for everyone, starting with civilians,” Jean-Noël Barrot said at a summit at the United Nations.

“That is why I have called for an emergency Security Council meeting on Lebanon this week.”

Deadliest death toll since end of civil war

The Israeli army launched a massive bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, and wounding 1,645, despite orders to evacuate the civilian population, the Lebanese health minister said.

This is the deadliest death toll registered in Lebanon since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, according to a Lebanese official speaking on condition of anonymity. According to Nasser Yassine, the Lebanese minister in charge of coordinating crisis management,“Tens of thousands of people” are fleeing southern Lebanon “due to Israeli atrocities”.

Addressing the Lebanese in a short video recording, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured that his country was “not at war with you, but with Hezbollah”. “Hezbollah has been using you as human shields for too long,”, he added. The simultaneous strikes focused on southern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, the Bekaa Valley in the east, and northern Lebanon near Syria. The Israeli military then announced “a targeted strike” on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

More than 1,000 targets bombed

According to a security source in Lebanon, a senior Hezbollah officer, Ali Karaki, was targeted. Hezbollah assured in the evening that its head of the Southern Command had escaped the attack and had been taken to a safe place. The Israeli army said on X that it had carried out 650 air sorties over the past 24 hours and had bombed 1,100 targets linked to Hezbollah, including vehicles and weapons caches. In retaliation, the Shiite movement said it had fired rockets at Israeli military positions. “We are intensifying our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal of bringing the northerners safely back to their homes,”, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a video on Monday.

“These are days when Israeli public opinion will have to show composure,” he added. “These are complicated days” are waiting for Israel to change the security balance in the north, Benjamin Netanyahu later said in a message released by his office.

Fear of a real war

In the Sassine neighborhood, east of Beirut, Joseph Ghafary, a civil servant, said he feared that Hezbollah would overreact to the intensification of Israeli strikes and that a real war would break out.

“If the Hezbollah is carrying out a major operation, Israel will respond and destroy more. We cannot stand it,” he said. “Israel wants to strike, it wants to continue, which means it is pushing Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah leader-editor's note) to start a war. This is really dangerous,” he added. Mohammed Sibai, a shopkeeper in Beirut's Hamra district, told Reuters he considered the intensified strikes to be “the beginning of the war” “If they want war, what can we do? It has been imposed on us. We can do nothing,” he lamented.