UN denounces Lebanon device blasts as violation of international law 

United Nations — 

The United Nations said Friday that the detonation of handheld connection devices successful Lebanon could represent a warfare transgression arsenic Beirut's apical diplomat accused Israel of orchestrating what helium called a panic attack.

The blasts that killed astatine slightest 37 radical and wounded astir 3,000 connected Tuesday and Wednesday targeted connection devices utilized by the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

Pagers and walkie-talkies exploded arsenic their users were buying successful supermarkets, walking connected streets and attending funerals, plunging the state into panic.

"International humanitarian instrumentality prohibits the usage of booby-trap devices successful the signifier of seemingly harmless portable objects," the U.N.'s precocious commissioner for quality rights, Volker Turk, told the Security Council during an exigency league connected Lebanon requested by Algeria.

"It is simply a warfare transgression to perpetrate unit intended to dispersed panic among civilians," helium added, repeating his telephone for an "independent, rigorous and transparent" investigation.

"I americium appalled by the breadth and interaction of the attacks," said Turk.

"These attacks correspond a caller improvement successful warfare, wherever connection tools go weapons," helium added. "This cannot beryllium the caller normal."

Speaking astatine the Security Council, Lebanon's apical diplomat, Abdallah Bouhabib, called the onslaught "an unprecedented method of warfare successful its brutality and terror."

"Israel, done this violent aggression, has violated the basal principles of planetary humanitarian law," helium said, calling Israel a "rogue state."

Israel has not commented connected the instrumentality blasts but has said it volition widen the scope of its warfare successful Gaza to see the Lebanon front.

"We person nary volition to participate a warfare with Hezbollah successful Lebanon, but we cannot proceed the mode it is," Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told reporters Friday.

Speaking astatine the Security Council, helium said Israel would bash "whatever it takes" to reconstruct information successful bluish areas.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the assemblage was "very acrophobic astir the heightened escalation" crossed the Lebanon-Israel frontier aft Friday's Israeli onslaught connected Beirut. He called for "maximum restraint" from each sides.