EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has said that the escalating clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threaten to plunge the Middle East into all-out war, AFP reports.

“I can say we are almost in a full-fledged war,” Borrell said ahead of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

“We’re seeing more military strikes, more damage, more collateral damage, more victims,” he added.

“Everybody has to put all their capacity to stop this,” Borrell said, pressing for a solution in New York.

On Gaza, he said “despite all the diplomatic capacity that we have deployed, nothing has been able to stop the war”, accusing both sides of “procrastinating”.