Treasurer Jim Chalmers has urged Australians not to travel to Lebanon, expressing concerns about a wider conflict after hand-held device explosions inside the country.
On Tuesday, thousands of pagers, believed to have been purchased by the militant organization Hezbollah five months ago, exploded in southern Lebanon.
with the Lebanese Ministry of Health reporting that 32 people were killed and at least 3,450 injured in the two waves of explosions.
Chalmers warned that these “remarkable scenes” could lead to a further deterioration of the country’s security situation and have wider implications for the region.
“For us more broadly, from an Australian perspective, we are gravely concerned about the human consequences of an escalation of an ever-widening regional conflict in the Middle East,” he said on Thursday morning .
“It’s another reminder, I think, to Australians: don’t travel to Lebanon.
“We’ve been saying this for a while now. Make sure you stay away from Lebanon, it’s a dangerous place for Australians to visit at the moment and we see that in some of these images.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong echoed Chalmers’ concerns, saying Australians should use commercial flights still available to return home.
The Australian government’s Smartraveller platform updated its warning for Lebanon on September 18, encouraging travelers to “leave immediately.”
“The security situation could deteriorate rapidly across Lebanon with little or no warning,” the website reads.
With many airlines postponing or canceling flights, the government is recommending Australians “take the first available flight and not wait for a preferred route”.
said the attacks were a “sickening” escalation of regional tensions.
“The horrific pager attack that killed nine people, including a young child, and injured thousands across Lebanon is exactly the type of sickening war that the people of Naarm/Melbourne were protesting against. accounts,” she said.
Although Israeli officials have not commented on the explosions, a senior Lebanese security source says the Israeli spy agency Mossad was behind the attacks.
The official told Reuters that Mossad, which has long conducted sophisticated operations on foreign soil, had planted explosives in pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed that the army was moving its troops and resources north, where Lebanon borders Israel.
Australia, along with the United States, Israel and a number of other countries, considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
