UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 :The United Nations has condemned the suspected Israeli detonations this week of hand-held devices by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, stating that the attack violated international law and could be considered a war crime.
“International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-trap devices disguised as harmless portable objects,” Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the UN Security Council which met in emergency session late Friday following Israeli strikes on Beirut, resulting in the deaths of at least a dozen people.
The pager blasts , which killed at least 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 on Tuesday and Wednesday, targeted communication devices used by the Hezbollah group.
“It is a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians,” he added, reinforcing his call for an “independent, rigorous and transparent” investigation.
“I am appalled by the breadth and impact of the attacks,” Turk said.
“These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons,” he added.
“This cannot be the new normal,” he added.
Opening the debate, the top UN political affairs official warned that the risk to security and stability, not only in Lebanon but also in the wider Middle East region, could not be clearer.
Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peace-building Affairs, told the 15-member Council that strikes and exchanges of fire across the Blue Line, which have been going on for nearly a year, have expanded in scope and intensity.
In some cases, she said, they reached much deeper into Lebanese and Israeli territory, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides and causing numerous casualties, including among civilians.
Lebanon’s UN Ambassador, Abdallah Bouhabib, called the attack “an unprecedented method of warfare in its brutality and terror.”
“Israel, through this terrorist aggression, has violated the basic principles of international humanitarian law,” he said, calling Israel a “rogue state.”
Israel has declined comments on the device blasts but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.
“We have no intention to enter a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but we cannot continue the way it is,” Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told reporters Friday.
Speaking at the Security Council, he said Israel would do “whatever it takes” to restore security in northern areas.
US Deputy Ambassador envoy Robert Wood said that Washington “played no role” in the deadly communication devices explosions.
“The Security Council cannot ignore the origins of this particular conflict between Israel and Hezbollah,” he added,
Explosions of communication devices in Lebanon ‘unheard of in history’.
Wood said, “The US continues to believe a diplomatic resolution is the only way to create the conditions for displaced Lebanese and Israeli civilians to return to their homes with safety and security.”
Chinese envoy Fu Cong also denounced the explosions of communication devices and described it as something “unheard of in history.”
“This practice is, without a doubt, a gross violation of a country’s sovereignty and security and a blatant breach of international law, particularly international humanitarian law, is an act that tramples on human lives with unconscionable callousness,” he said.
Fu demanded a full investigation” on the attacks and encouraged Israel to “forego its obsession with the use of force and to halt without delay, its militia operations in Gaza, its violations of Lebanon sovereignty and security, and its adventurism that risks dragging the region into yet another devastating catastrophe.”
Russia’s Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the perpetrators of the explosion attacks “have deliberately been seeking to foment a large-scale military confrontation.”
“They have striven to provoke a new major Middle East war,” he said, adding it was not the first attempt.
“Russia considers the explosions a “terrorist attack,” resulting from the US administration’s “pseudo diplomacy,” he said.
Meanwhile, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters that the world body was “very concerned about the heightened escalation” across the Lebanon-Israel frontier after Friday’s Israeli strike on Beirut.
He called for “maximum restraint” from all sides.
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