Summary Israeli PM urged UN Security Council to condemn Hezbollah for digging cross-border "attack tunnels".
METULA (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday urged the UN Security Council to condemn Hezbollah for digging cross-border "attack tunnels" and to demand Lebanon prevent such activity from its territory.
Stepping up its diplomatic campaign, Israel for the first time granted media access to one of the tunnels from south Lebanon.
Netanyahu s remarks came ahead of a Security Council meeting to discuss what Israel says is a network of tunnels dug by the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group, of which at least four have been uncovered.
"I call on all the members of the Security Council to condemn Hezbollah s wanton acts of aggression, to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organisation, to press for heightened sanctions against Hezbollah," Netanyahu told foreign media in the Israeli parliament.
Israel also wanted the Security Council "to demand that Lebanon stop allowing its territory to be allowed to be used as an act of aggression and its citizens to be used as pawns, to support Israel s right to defend itself against Iranian inspired and Iranian conducted aggression," he said.
The army on Wednesday transported journalists in armoured vehicles to film one of the tunnels just dozens of metres (yards) from the Lebanese border near the Israeli town of Metula.
The media trip came two weeks after the army announced the launch of an operation dubbed "Northern Shield" to destroy tunnels it said have been dug under the border by Hezbollah.
The tunnel shown to journalists appeared to extend around 40 metres inside Israeli territory. An exit point was not seen, only an access hole that had been dug above it.
Bulldozers were at work in the mud nearby close to the concrete barrier which Israel has built along the border. Concrete was being poured into several holes that had been excavated.
"We ll stay here until we ve finished. It took Hezbollah years to construct these tunnels. Our operation will set them back years," a military official told journalists, asking not to be named.
Israel fought a devastating war against Hezbollah in 2006 that was halted by a UN-brokered truce.
Hezbollah is the only group in Lebanon not to have disarmed after the country s 1975-1990 civil war.
Netanyahu called the tunnels "an act of war" and accused the Lebanese government of not preventing their creation.
"The Lebanese government, which should be the first to challenge this and protest this, is doing nothing at best, and colluding at worst," he said.
Netanyahu noted that UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, has confirmed the existence of four tunnels, stressing that it must be given swift and "unlimited access" to observe and document them.
