UN secretary-general urges action on global challenges

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced on Tuesday a growing number of governments and other groups who feel they are "entitled to a get out of jail free card," citing wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and Sudan.

"They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter," Guterres told world leaders at the UN General Assembly. "They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people. And nothing will happen."

"The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable," he said.

With the nearly year-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in besieged Gaza threatening to now engulf Lebanon - where Israel targeted more than a thousand Hezbollah targets on Monday - Guterres made an impassioned plea.

"Lebanon is at the brink," he said. "The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world - cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza."