Israel today continued attacks in Lebanon, where the Iranian-affiliated movement Hezbollah announced the death of a senior member the day before in a strike on a southern suburb of Beirut, as the international community tries to prevent the threatened ignition of the entire region.

Israel today launched new aerial bombardments in southern Lebanon for the third consecutive day, the Lebanese national news agency (NNA in English, ANI in French) reports. “As of 05:00 (local and Greek time), enemy warplanes launched strikes” against several sectors of southern Lebanon, the agency said, adding that there were casualties but without specifying the number of casualties.

For their part, the Israeli armed forces said early today that anti-aircraft defense systems on duty intercepted a missile detected crossing the border after it was fired from Lebanon, shortly after alarm sirens sounded in the metropolis of Tel Aviv and sectors of central Israeli territory, confirming media reports of the incident. No casualties or damage were reported, and the armed forces said there was no change in civil protection instructions.

After Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the Lebanon has now become an “active front”, Filip Lazarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Filip Lazarini said during an interview with AFP, calling it a “triple tragedy.”

The United Nations Security Council was convened to hold an emergency meeting today, Wednesday, at 6:00 p.m. (New York time; at 1:00 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, Greece time), to discuss the escalating crisis at the request of France.

The storming, multi-deadly bombings of the past few days have thrown hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians into the streets, fleeing the south in every direction. While, early today, Israel’s air force struck a “warehouse” in Sadiyat, a coastal town about 20 kilometers south of the capital, a French News Agency source told Lebanese security forces.

In a statement released, Hezbollah confirmed the death of “commander Ibrahim Mohammed Qubaisi“, who “was martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, in the phrase generally used by the movement when referring to those killed by Israeli fire.

Earlier, the Israeli armed forces said that “air force fighter jets eliminated Ibrahim Mohamed Qubaisi, commander of the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s rocket and missile network, in Beirut yesterday (Tuesday).”

Always according to the Israeli military, “at least two” other commanders of units coordinated by Ibrahim Qubaisi were killed in that strike – the toll, according to the Lebanese health ministry, was at least 6 dead and 15 wounded.

Hezbollah fired “about 300 rockets” at Israel in retaliation, “wounding six civilians and soldiers, most of them lightly,” according to the Israeli armed forces.

The Shiite Lebanese movement, for its part, claimed responsibility for 18 attacks against Israeli territory, including the firing of 90 rockets at the headquarters of the Israeli army’s northern command near Safed, and the launching of drones one-way against a naval base in southern Haifa, the major port in northern Israel.

“We will continue to hit Hezbollah. And I say to the Lebanese people: our war is not against you, it is with Hezbollah,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured in a video released by his ministry.

Israel has “no desire” to move to invade Lebanese territory and would prefer a diplomatic solution to end its conflict with Hezbollah, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Dannon, has pleaded, recalling that the purpose of the operations is to return to their homes the tens of thousands of northern Israelis who have been forced to flee because of the virtually daily exchanges of fire that are on the verge of shutting down time.

Concern over the rapid escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, dominated the opening in New York of the UN General Assembly.

“Lebanon is on the brink of the abyss,” UN Secretary-General Anthony Guterres warned once again from the podium.

On Monday, the heaviest bombing launched by Israel since October 8, 2023 swept through southern and eastern Lebanon, killing at least 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women, and injuring 1,835 others, according to Lebanese health authorities. It is the heaviest casualty toll in a single day since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

According to the Israeli army, 1,600 “targets”, Hezbollah positions, were hit in southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley (east), another stronghold of the pro-Tehran movement.

The number of Lebanese citizens turned internally displaced now approaches 500,000 after Israel escalated its bombing campaign against Hezbollah this week, Foreign Minister Abdullah Bu Habib said yesterday at an event organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Tens of thousands of people, according to the UN, fled to Saida, the largest city in the south, Beirut, or Syria.

Zainab Diab, 32, who fled like hundreds of other families to a school turned reception and shelter center for internally displaced people near the capital, recounted how her village near the border, which she left with her husband and four children, was “practically destroyed.”

“We didn’t even know where the bombing was coming from. It’s like this time there was even more barbarism.”

Schools and universities will remain closed until the end of the week in Lebanese territory. Many airlines have suspended their flights to and from Beirut.

Britain announced late Tuesday night that it was sending some 700 of its troops to Cyprus to prepare for possible emergency operations to remove UK nationals from Lebanon.

In mid-September, Israel announced that the “centre of gravity” of its war was shifting from the Gaza Strip to the north, officially declaring its “objective” to be the “safe return” of tens of thousands of its residents to their homes.

Hezbollah, for its part, vows to keep hitting Israel “until the end of the offensive in Gaza”, where the war that broke out in October last year, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas offensive in the south of Israeli territory, is raging for the 355th day.

The thunderous bombings followed hard hits for Hezbollah last week – the series of communications device blasts that were booby-trapped with explosives on September 17 and 18, leaving 39 dead and hundreds wounded, and then, on 20 September, the Israeli bombing of southern Beirut that killed 55 people and decimated the leadership of the elite Radwan unit, including its leader Ibrahim Akil.

On the floor of the General Assembly, Joe Biden echoed Mr. Guterres, warning against “generalized war” in Lebanon and saying it was time “to finalize now” a cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip between the government of Israel and Hamas.

Other leaders condemned Israel’s actions, in Gaza and Lebanon. Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, referring to the war in the besieged small Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million people, called it a “crime of genocide.”

Iranian President Massoud Pezzekian met Tuesday night with his French counterpart Emanuel Macron – who called on him to advocate a “general de-escalation” in the Middle East – on the sidelines of the General Assembly. Earlier, he described via X as “incomprehensible” the UN’s “inaction” on Israel and told CNN that Hezbollah cannot be “left alone” in the conflict with Israel.

According to Israeli political analyst Michael Horowitz, both camps are aware of the dangers that a generalized war would entail. The situation is “extremely dangerous,” but there is “still room for diplomacy,” he assessed, speaking to the Agence France-Presse.

The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7, sparked by an unprecedented Hamas assault on southern Israel, during which 1.205 people, most of them civilians, according to a French News Agency count based on official data from Israeli authorities, which includes hostages killed while being held in the Palestinian enclave.

Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 97 remain in the hands of Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, though 33 are presumed dead by the Israeli army.

In retaliation, the Israeli government has vowed to wipe out Hamas, in power in the enclave since 2007, which it labels a terrorist organization, as have the US and the EU.

At least 41,467 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have since died in the large-scale Israeli military retaliatory operations, according to the Hamas health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN. The small Palestinian enclave under siege is facing a humanitarian disaster.