UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres affirmed that Lebanon cannot afford to become another Gaza, noting that the international organization supports intensive international efforts to achieve a temporary ceasefire, which would allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and pave the way for the resumption of a more lasting peace.
"Despite the dangerous conditions, our peacekeepers remain in position," Guterres said during the emergency UN Security Council (UNSC) session to discuss developments in Lebanon.
"I implore the Council to work in lock-step to help put out this fire," he said, calling on all parties to avoid a full-scale war.
"To all sides, let us say in one clear voice: Stop the killing and destruction. Tone down the rhetoric and threats. Step back from the brink. An all-out war must be avoided at all costs. It would surely be an all-out catastrophe," Guterres said.
"Many lives have been lost. All this must stop," he added.
For his part, Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf said the aggression that Lebanon is being subjected to represents an integral "part and parcel of the policy of escalation" that the Israeli settlement occupation has made a preferred approach and a deliberate strategy on more than one front and more than one destination in the Middle East.
He added that the Israeli occupation is no longer satisfied with the genocidal war it is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but is igniting one crisis after another and is seeking, day after day, to extend its criminality and impose its tyranny on all neighboring countries, affirming that the time has come for the UNSC to realize that the issue of security and stability in the Middle East cannot remain hostage to the delusions of the Israeli occupation.