The warning by one of Washington's key allies in the region marks a new level of concern about the spiral of attacks.
The United Arab Emirates has urged the United States to support an immediate ceasefire of Israel's war in Gaza, warning that the risk of a regional conflagration is growing daily as the three-month-long conflict rages on.
"We need a humanitarian ceasefire now; we can't wait another 100 days," the UAE Ambassador to the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh, said in an online interview from New York.
"The risks are high, the war in Gaza is very clearly an open wound and it's destabilising the region," she said, adding that the US could play a critical role in easing the tensions.
The warning by one of Washington's key allies in the region marks a new level of concern about the spiral of attacks involving Israel, Iran and its proxies and US forces as fighting drags on in Gaza amid widespread destruction and a soaring civilian death toll.
The Iranian-backed militant group Hamas, designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union, killed 1,200 people and abducted 240 others in its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. In retaliation, Israeli troops displaced most of Gaza's 2 million population and killed more than 24,000, according to the Hamas-run health authorities.
In mid-December the World Bank estimated Israeli bombardment had damaged or destroyed more than 60 per cent of Gaza's infrastructure.
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Lana Nusseibeh, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the UAE to the UN, and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have held talks on the sidelines of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meetings.
The Russian Foreign Minister also met with his counterparts from Iran, Turkey and Lebanon.
The meetings focused on the Gaza Strip, Syria and "the tense situation" in the Red Sea, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. The meetings took place in New York on Monday.
The ministry said Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian agreed on the need for a swift ceasefire in Gaza and conditions for providing humanitarian assistance to civilians.
"General concern was expressed about the tense situation in the Red Sea, which has sharply degraded," it said.
On Monday, the US and UK carried out an additional round of strikes against Yemen's Houthis over their targeting of Red Sea shipping, the Pentagon said.
Lavrov and Lebanon's Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib talked about the importance of collective efforts of countries in the region toward an immediate ceasefire, the ministry said.
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