The associate spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Florencia Soto Niño, expressed this Tuesday her concern about the possible expansion of the conflict between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). after the death of the ‘number two’ of the Palestinian militia, Salah Al-Arouri, in an alleged Israeli drone attack in Beirut, the Lebanese capital. “The events are extremely worrying. And I think this really highlights what the Secretary General (of the UN, António Guterres) just said about the dangers of this conflict spreading to the entire region,” Soto Niño explained during a press conference.

Likewise, he highlighted that Guterres has urged all parties to the conflict to exercise “maximum restraint” to reduce regional tensions and prevent a miscalculation from escalating the situation, in reference to the statements of the Lebanese Shiite party-militia Hezbollah, which has promised that the attack “will not go without response or punishment.”

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has also asked the Israeli authorities to avoid “any escalation attitude” in the region after the attack in the Lebanese capital. “The president has stressed that it is essential to avoid any attitude of escalation, especially in Lebanon, and that France will continue to transmit these messages to all actors directly or indirectly involved in the area,” the Elysée noted, according to BFM TV. Macron, who has had a phone call with Israel’s opposition leader and member of the emergency government, Benny Gantz, has also expressed his “deep concern at the very high number of civilian deaths and the situation of absolute humanitarian emergency in Gaza.”

In this sense, he recalled “Israel’s imperative” to protect civilians and has underlined the “urgency” of delivering humanitarian aid to the population in the Palestinian enclave, while calling for “achieving a lasting ceasefire, with the help of all regional and international partners.”

The spokesman for the Fatah movement, which heads the Palestinian Authority, Hussein Hamayel, has assured that Israel intends to escalate the conflict in the Gaza Strip. “The murder (of Al-Arouri) is evidence that the Israeli occupier is a criminal state and is working to escalate the conflict on all borders (…) this murder will not stop the Palestinian people from ending their fight to rid themselves of from the Israeli yoke,” Hamayel told the Turkish news agency Anatolia.

Furthermore, he has reported that, prior to this attack, leaders of the Palestinian National Action had been “murdered”including members of the former Fatah Central Committee, although no names have been specified.

Thus, he has expressed his rejection of this attack, which has occurred as a consequence “of the international silence regarding Israeli crimes.” “Today we say goodbye to a patriotic Palestinian who lost his life for Palestine. He is a fighter, a prisoner, a liberator and a martyr.”

At least seven people have been killed and several others injured after a drone attack on a Hamas office in Mushrifiya, in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital. Among the fatalities is Al-Arouri, considered ‘number two’ in the political arm of the Islamist organization and one of the commanders of the Al Qassam brigades.

In Lebanon since 2018, Al-Arouri has been imprisoned in Israeli prisons for twelve years before being released in 2010. He is blamed for several attacks against Israel from Lebanese soil. He has been one of the main intermediaries in the release of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.