The foreign ministers of the three countries said after a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly that they discussed “the dangerous escalation taking place in the region, and stressed that stopping this escalation begins with stopping the Israeli aggression on Gaza.”
The ministers condemned “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, and stressed that Israel is pushing the region into a comprehensive war,” according to the statement.
The foreign ministers called on “the international community and the Security Council to assume their relevant responsibilities to stop the war, and pointed out that Israel bears full responsibility for this deterioration, which will have serious consequences for the entire region.”
They stressed the need to discuss “the course of action within the framework of the tripartite cooperation mechanism” in preparation for a tripartite summit “at the leaders’ level in Cairo.”
The meeting of the three ministers came amid an unprecedented escalation between Israel and Hezbollah since the outbreak of the current conflict between them about a year ago against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which renews regional and international fears of the outbreak of a large-scale conflict in the region.
Israel has been launching intensive air strikes since Monday, most of which target areas in southern and eastern Lebanon. It says they are targeting Hezbollah targets, while the latter announces the launching of missiles towards areas and military sites in the north of the Hebrew state.
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad announced on Tuesday that airstrikes on Monday alone killed 558 people, most of them “safe and unarmed,” and wounded more than 1,800, in the highest daily death toll recorded in Lebanon since the civil war (1975-1990).
Hezbollah has been dealt a severe blow in recent days after thousands of its communications devices were blown up last week in attacks attributed to Israel that killed 39 people and wounded thousands more. An Israeli raid on its stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday also killed a number of its elite force leaders.
The party announced on Wednesday the killing of military leader Ibrahim Qubaisi in an Israeli raid in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday, which resulted in the deaths of six people, according to the Ministry of Health.
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