Russia says risk of big regional war very high after killing of Hezbollah leader

Russia says risk of big regional war very high after killing of Hezbollah leader

The Kremlin on Monday condemned the killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air attack last week and said it assessed the risk of a major Middle East war as "extremely high".

"The Russian side condemns such actions, we believe that they have led to a significant destabilisation of the situation in the region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"The main thing is that such indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in Lebanon leads to a huge number of human casualties, which will inevitably bring on a humanitarian catastrophe like the one we are seeing in Gaza," he added, expressing Moscow's "deepest concern".

Israel's intensifying assault on Hezbollah has deepened international concerns about the risk of a wider Middle East war involving Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the killing of Nasrallah at the weekend as a political assassination and the Russian foreign ministry in a statement called on Israel to immediately stop hostilities in Lebanon.