U.N. officials voiced concern on Tuesday that the same methods of warfare used by Israel that caused high civilian casualties and widespread
destruction in Gaza are now being repeated in Lebanon, calling for action to avoid the same "spiral of doom".
Israeli forces have begun
ground operations in the southwest of Lebanon, escalating a year-long conflict with the Iran-backed group Hezbollah that has killed over 1,000 people in the past two weeks and prompted the mass flight of over a million people.
In the Gaza Strip, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and most of the 2.3 million population displaced in the war triggered by the
Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by Hamas in which gunmen killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages.
"It is in my mind, from the time I awake until the time I sleep, that we could go into the same sort of spiral of doom, and we need to do everything we can to stop that from happening in this particular crisis," World Food Programme Country Director in Lebanon Matthew Hollingworth said in response to a question about parallels between the two conflicts.
