GENEVA, Sept 23, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - The United Nations voiced alarm Monday at 
the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, warning that 
actions and rhetoric was catapulting the Mideast conflict "to another level".

"We are extremely concerned, deeply worried about the escalation in Lebanon," 
Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told AFP.

"The attacks that we saw on the communication devices, the pagers, followed 
by rocket attacks and rocket fire being exchanged on both sides ... marks a 
real escalation," she said.

"What we've been warning about all along, the regional spillover of the 
conflict, it appears that both the actions and the rhetoric of the parties to 
the conflict is taking the conflict to another level."

After nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Hezbollah and 
Israeli forces, the strikes since the weekend are the most intense since the 
outbreak of war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza 
Strip last October 7.

Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south killed 100 people 
and wounded more than 400 others on Monday, while Lebanese official media 
said people were receiving Israeli phone warnings telling them to move away 
from Hezbollah targets.

Israel meanwhile said more than 300 Hezbollah sites had been targeted on 
Monday in dozens of strikes.

That came after at least 39 people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded last 
week when hand-held communications devices used by Hezbollah operatives 
detonated across Lebanon. Hezbollah has blamed Israel, which has not 
commented.

On Friday the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told the 
Security Council the attack on Hezbollah communications devices violated 
international law and could constitute a war crime.

Without attributing the attack on the communications devices, Shamdasani 
stressed that "it is a war crime to commit violence that is intended to 
spread terror among civilians".

"The simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether they are 
civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge of where these people 
will be ... this is not acceptable under international law."

Shamdasani highlighted the calls from across the international community 
"pleading for a deescalation".

"But instead of a deescalation, what we have seen ... is further rhetoric 
with further plans of an escalation," she said. "This needs to stop."