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France has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council after Israel launched its most intense wave of air strikes on Lebanon.
“Following today’s strikes in Lebanon, which have caused hundreds of victims, I have requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council this week,” new French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on social media platform X late Monday.
As the war in Gaza nears its first year, a long-feared escalation in the Middle East conflict appeared to have come on Monday, with Lebanese authorities reporting that at least 492 people, including 35 children, were killed and 1,645 others wounded in Israeli strikes.
Israel said it carried out more than 1,300 attacks on targets in Lebanon, including one in the capital Beirut, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a preemptive strike aimed at eliminating Hezbollah’s arsenal.
