Urgent calls for foreign citizens to leave Lebanon grew on Sunday, with France warning of a “highly volatile” situation as Iran and its allies prepare their response to high-profile killings blamed on Israel.
The Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which has exchanged fire almost daily with Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza in October, announced that its fighters fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel overnight.
The Israeli military said 30 projectiles were launched from Lebanon, most of them intercepted.
With Israel on high alert in anticipation of major military action by armed groups aligned with Tehran, including Hezbollah and Hamas, doctors and police said two people were killed on Sunday in a knife attack in a Tel Aviv suburb.
The attacker, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, was “neutralized” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued shelling the Gaza Strip, witnesses and officials in the besieged Hamas-ruled territory said, with no end in sight to the nearly 10-month war sparked by the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. .
France, Canada and Jordan were among the latest governments to call on their citizens to leave Lebanon.
“In a highly volatile security context”, French citizens have been “urgently asked” to avoid traveling to Lebanon, and those already in the country “to take steps now to leave… as quickly as possible”, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. he said.
The United States and Britain have issued similar warnings.
France on Sunday also urged its citizens living in Iran to “temporarily leave,” warning that Iranian airspace and airports could close.
Several Western airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon and other airports in the region.
On Sunday, Qatar Airways said the Doha-Beirut route would “operate exclusively during daylight hours”, at least until Monday.
Wednesday’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah’s military chief in Beirut, triggered vows of revenge from Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance” of armed groups supported by Tehran.
Israel, accused by Hamas, Iran and others of carrying out the attack that killed Haniyeh, has not commented directly on the matter.
– Tents for displaced blows –
Israel has promised to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also captured 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 who the military says are dead.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,583 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
Haniyeh, Hamas’ political chief, was the group’s chief negotiator in efforts to end the war.
His murder raised questions about the continued viability of efforts by Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators to broker a truce and exchange of hostages and prisoners.
On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday, with attacks, bombings and gunfire reported in and around Gaza City and in the south of the territory.
The Israeli military stated that its air forces struck “approximately 50 terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the last 24 hours.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies were recovered from a residential building in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza following an Israeli airstrike.
Doctors at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza said at least five people were killed and 16 injured in an Israeli drone attack on tents housing displaced Palestinians in the medical complex, with a separate attack on a nearby house in same area killing three people.
On Saturday, an Israeli attack on a school turned shelter for displaced people killed at least 17 people, the civil defense agency said. Israel said the facility was used by militants.
– ‘Unrestricted’ war –
Analysts told AFP that joint but measured action by Iran and its allies was likely, while Tehran said it expected Hezbollah to reach deeper into Israel and no longer be confined to military targets.
Israel’s ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region.
US President Joe Biden, asked by reporters whether he thought Iran would withdraw, said: “I hope so. I don’t know.”
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was due to be in Tehran for a rare visit to discuss “the situation in the region”, Amman said.
The Israeli military was “determined to continue fighting until we fundamentally change the security situation in the north,” said the head of Home Front Command, Rafi Gilo.
“We are… prepared for any scenario and any response,” Gilo said according to an army statement.
Haniyeh’s murder “has brought the Middle East to its most dangerous moment in years,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said in a report released on Saturday.
The potential for a miscalculation that would trigger an “unfettered war… is probably greater now than it was in April,” he added.
On April 13, Iran fired a series of drones and missiles at Israel – most of which were intercepted – following a deadly attack on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.
The ICG stated that securing “a long-awaited ceasefire” in Gaza was “the best way to significantly reduce tensions in the region.”
Hamas officials, but also some analysts, as well as protesters in Israel, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war to safeguard his far-right ruling coalition.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told his cabinet that he was “making every effort” to return the hostages and that he was prepared “to go a long way” to do so.
bur-ami/dcp
