{"id":28153,"date":"2026-05-31T15:04:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/28153\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T15:04:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:04:38","slug":"france-requests-emergency-un-meeting-amid-israeli-advance-in-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/28153\/","title":{"rendered":"France requests emergency UN meeting amid Israeli advance in Lebanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I have requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council<\/a> because, while we recognise Israel’s right, like that of all countries, to self-defence… nothing can justify the continuation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and its ever-deeper occupation of Lebanese territory,” French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot told BFMTV channel on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to push deeper into Lebanon<\/a> after his military took over the medieval castle of Beaufort on Sunday, calling it a “dramatic shift” in the campaign against Hezbollah<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Iran-backed militant group said on Sunday it targeted Israeli army positions and infrastructure in Shlomi and Nahariya in northern Israel<\/a>, while air raid sirens blared in the Acre area.<\/p>\n

Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East<\/a> war on 2 March when Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran<\/a>‘s supreme leader.<\/p>\n

A truce to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on 17 April<\/a>, but has never been observed. Both sides accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire and justify their attacks by the other’s alleged breaches.<\/p>\n

As fighting escalated in Lebanon, France<\/a> said on Sunday it requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, alarmed by Israel’s “ever-deeper occupation of Lebanese territory”.<\/p>\n

Macron urges Israel to withdraw from Lebanon as Salam calls for \u20ac500m in aid<\/a><\/p>\n

Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Chakif<\/a>, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.<\/p>\n

In a video statement released hours after the military took Beaufort, Netanyahu said “we have returned united, determined and stronger than ever”.<\/p>\n

“Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah’s control. The capture of Beaufort is a dramatic stage and a dramatic shift in the policy we are leading.”<\/p>\n

Historic strongpoint<\/p>\n

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said troops had captured the historic strongpoint, which commands sweeping views of south Lebanon, as they expanded their ground operations.<\/p>\n

“Forty-four years after the heroic Battle of Beaufort, and on this day commemorating the soldiers who fell in the First Lebanon War (1982<\/a>), our troops have returned to the summit of Beaufort and once again raised the Israeli flag there,” Katz said in a social media post.<\/p>\n

In a shelter for the displaced in Sidon, southern Lebanon’s largest city, Zeinab Fakih, from Nabatieh, told French news agency AFP they were very afraid.<\/p>\n

“It is impossible for us to return to our home, because the city is in great destruction,” she said, adding that the arrival of Israeli forces at the castle was “tragic”.<\/p>\n

The push to Beaufort came as the Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order to areas south of the Zahrani River, north of the Litani and around 40 kilometres from the border.<\/p>\n

French soldier killed in Lebanon in attack on UN peacekeepers<\/a><\/p>\n

It said it was targeting “Hezbollah infrastructure in Tyre and several additional areas in southern Lebanon” as Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a series of strikes on the area.<\/p>\n

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam had accused Israel on Saturday of pursuing a “scorched-earth policy and collective punishment” in the south, urging a halt to the fighting.<\/p>\n

Military delegations from Lebanon and Israel held security talks in Washington on Friday, with more US-brokered negotiations planned next week.<\/p>\n

The Israeli army said Sunday that one of its soldiers had been killed a day earlier by a Hezbollah explosive drone, bringing to 25 the number of Israeli military deaths in Lebanon since early March.<\/p>\n

The Lebanese health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,371 people in the same period.<\/p>\n

(with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I have requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council because, while we recognise Israel’s right,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20480,857,5,426,63,858,20506,20507,425,5825,9717],"class_list":["post-28153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-beaufort-castle","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-france","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-israel-katz","tag-israeli-military","tag-israeli-prime-minister","tag-lebanon","tag-southern-lebanon","tag-united-nations-security-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}