PM urges Australians to leave Lebanon due to ‘real risk of escalation’

The Albanese government has warned that the conflict in the Middle East is at risk of severe escalation and urged Australians in Lebanon to return home after the deaths of key Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Israeli airstrikes.

Israel said it had killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander – Fuad Shukr – on Wednesday in an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that also killed at least one woman and two children and wounded dozens of others in escalating hostilities with the Lebanese terrorist group.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged Australians in Lebanon to come home.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Hours later, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, which the terrorist group said was “a Zionist airstrike on [Haniyeh’s] residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration of Iran’s new president”.

Iran’s leaders vowed to retaliate for Haniyeh’s death having been carried out on their soil. Iran supports Hamas, as well as Hezbollah and other Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza.

The assassination appears to have derailed fragile negotiations for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, as senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said it was “a grave escalation”, as well as raised fears of a wider conflict in the region. Haniyeh was a top negotiator in the cease-fire talks who had led Hamas’ political office in Qatar.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday morning that the developments in the Middle East were concerning, and Australians risked getting stuck in the region.

“Do not travel to Lebanon at the moment,” he said. “We have a very clear statement that has been issued through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and for those Australians that are overseas – they should take the opportunity to come home to Australia.

“There is a risk that the Beirut airport might not be open for commercial flights, and given the numbers of people that are there, there is no guarantee … that people will be able to come home through other means if that airport is shut.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has joined the United States in raising Lebanon’s travel advisory, calling on citizens not to visit the country, as Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong urged Australians in Lebanon to leave immediately.

In a video posted to social media, Wong said now was the time to leave Lebanon.

“My message to Australian citizens and residents in Lebanon is: now is the time to leave. If you are in Australia and thinking of travelling to Lebanon, do not,” she said.

“There is a real risk that the conflict in the region escalates seriously.”

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher echoed Wong’s concern, telling ABC News Breakfast Australians needed to come home before “we see any further escalation of this regional conflict”.

“We’re really concerned about the possibility of regional escalation in the Middle East, and we want Australians to take it seriously if they are in that region.”

Politicians and diplomats fear that retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah and Iran could spark an all-out war away from the delicate rules of engagement that have largely limited strikes to areas near the Lebanon-Israel border.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “all parties” in the Middle East must avoid actions that could plunge the region into further conflict, appealing for all countries to “make the right choices in the days ahead”.

The UN Security Council was called for an emergency meeting on Wednesday to respond to the unravelling situation, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pressed nations to come together quickly to keep tensions from boiling over.

A spokesman for Guterres said the strike in Tehran and another in the Lebanese capital of Beirut were “a dangerous escalation”.

The spokesman reiterated calls for de-escalation and said Guterres was urging the international community “to work together to urgently prevent any actions that could push the Middle East over the edge, with a devastating impact on civilians”.

The Security Council meeting was scheduled after Iran pressed the UN’s most powerful body to address “Israeli aggression and terrorist attacks”.

Bitter regional rivals, Israel and Iran risked plunging into war earlier this year when Israel hit Iran’s embassy in Damascus in April. Iran retaliated, and Israel countered in an unprecedented exchange of strikes on each other’s soil, but international efforts succeeded in containing that cycle before it spun out of control.

With AP

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