New York, 24 September 2024 (dpa/MIA) — France has requested that the UN Security Council hold an emergency meeting after Israel launched its deadliest wave of airstrikes at the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia in Lebanon in decades.

"Following today's strikes in Lebanon, which claimed hundreds of victims, I have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council this week," new French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday.

As the war in Gaza approaches its first anniversary, the long-feared escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict appeared to have arrived on Monday, with Lebanese authorities reporting at least 492 people dead, including 35 children, and another 1,645 wounded in the Israeli strikes.

Israel said it had carried out more than 1,300 attacks on targets in Lebanon, including one in the capital Beirut, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a pre-emptive strike aimed at eliminating Hezbollah's weaponry.

The simmering dispute between Israel and Hezbollah - a firm backer of the Palestinian militant group Hamas - intensified again last week after thousands of communication devices were detonated in Lebanon, killing more than 50 people, before an Israeli strike on the Hezbollah leadership near Beirut.

Monday's attacks, however, represent a significant escalation, in the most severe episode of fighting in Lebanon since the war of 2006.