FINUL warns of “catastrophe” if attacks between Lebanon and Israel persist

MadridThe United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Saturday lamented the death of at least 12 people in an attack launched from Lebanon against the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel, and warned of an “unimaginable catastrophe” if the exchange of attacks on both sides of the border continues.

“We deplore the deaths of civilians – children and adolescents – in Majdal Shams. Civilians must be protected at all times,” UNIFIL Commander Aroldo Lazaro and UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert said in a brief joint statement.

In the note, published on the social network X, the two UN officials called on the parties involved in the conflict to “act with maximum restraint” and to end the “intensification” of the exchange of attacks. Failure to do so, they warned, “could trigger a major conflagration that would plunge the entire region into an unimaginable catastrophe.”

The two UN agencies have said they are in contact with Lebanon and Israel, whose president accuses Hezbollah of being behind the attack. The Lebanese Shiite militia-party has denied any involvement in the Majdal Shams explosion.

At least twelve Israelis have been killed and more than a dozen injured by a projectile fired from Lebanon that landed on Saturday afternoon on a football pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel, according to the latest military report.

The Golan Heights is a territory that Israel captured from Syria during the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and which it effectively annexed in 1981, in a move not recognized by the international community.