Region

BEIRUT — Lebanon's caretaker prime minister said on Monday he was working to ensure his country does not enter the Hamas-Israel war, even as Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging cross-border fire.

Najib Mikati said he feared an escalation, with the border skirmishes stoking concerns that Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah could launch its own war with Israel.

"I am doing my duty to prevent Lebanon from entering the war" raging further south, Mikati told AFP in an interview.

Cash-strapped Lebanon is facing the possibility of war essentially leaderless, as political divisions have left the country without a president for almost a year, while Mikati has headed a caretaker cabinet for about a year and a half.

"Lebanon is in the eye of the storm," Mikati said.

"I cannot rule out an escalation because there is a race to reach a ceasefire before escalation spreads in the entire region."

Hizbollah and allied Palestinian factions in Lebanon have exchanged fire with Israel almost daily since Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel.

Iran-backed or affiliated groups have also launched attacks on Israel from Syria, and targeted US forces stationed in Syria and Iraq.

Mikati, who is on good terms with Hizbollah, said he has no “clear answer” about whether war loomed ahead, adding that “it depends on regional developments”.

In 2006, Israel and Hizbollah fought a bloody conflict that left more than 1,200 people dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers.

“For now Hizbollah has managed the situation rationally and wisely, and the rules of the game have remained constrained to certain limits,” Mikati said.

“But at the same time I feel like I cannot reassure Lebanese” because the situation is still developing, he added.

Violence on the Israel-Lebanon border has killed at least 62 people in Lebanon according to an AFP tally, 47 of them Hizbollah fighters but also including four civilians, one a Reuters journalist.

Israeli officials have reported at least four deaths, including one civilian.

Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon due to the skirmishes, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

RAMALLAH, Occupied Palestine — Israeli occupation forces killed five Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, said health officials in the occupied territory, as violence has escalated amid Israel's war on Gaza.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said four people aged 23 to 28 were killed during the Israeli early morning raid on the northern city of Jenin.

According to the official Palestinian agency Wafa, "more than 100 military vehicles and two bulldozers" took part.

The raid targeted Jenin and its refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups and the target of frequent military incursions.

Another nine people were wounded, a ministry statement said.

Military drones hovered over the area and army snipers were positioned on buildings around Jenin's main hospital, Wafa said.

Part of the hospital's perimeter wall was demolished by armoured military bulldozers.

120 dead in three weeks 

Later Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said a 23-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli forces in Yatta city near Hebron.

The ministry also confirmed on Monday that another 23-year-old man died after being shot by a settler days ago in Ras Karkar, northwest of Ramallah.

The deaths came a day after five Palestinians were killed by army fire during several military incursions into the West Bank.

The health ministry says around 120 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7.

The West Bank was already a hotbed of tension before the Gaza war, with frequent Israeli army raids, a surge in attacks by Jewish settlers.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — Ground battles raged inside the northern Gaza Strip on Monday and Israeli tanks were seen on the outskirts of the besieged costal enclave. 

Israel's intensifying land and air campaign since Hamas's October 7 attacks has heightened fears for the 2.4 million civilians trapped inside besieged Gaza.

Gaza's health ministry said Monday that at least 8,306 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the start of the war with Israel on October 7.

The ministry said at least 3,457 children were among the dead, as Israel continued to pound the Gaza Strip with air and artillery strikes.

Dozens of Israeli tanks rolled into the fringes of Gaza City, eyewitnesses said, after a night of heavy clashes in nearby areas.

Hamas said its Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades were engaged in "heavy fighting" with Israeli troops on Sunday inside northern Gaza, where besieged residents were again told to flee.

Concern has surged about the widening humanitarian disaster, with fears centred on Gaza hospitals inside Israeli-mandated evacuation zones where medics warn that many patients cannot be moved.

Columns of Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers were seen churning through the sand, and Israeli snipers took positions inside emptied residential buildings, in footage released by the army.

Israeli tanks were later spotted on the edges of Gaza City, usually the most densely populated urban area but now emptied of many residents following repeated Israeli evacuation orders.

A witness told AFP the Israeli tanks blocked the strip’s major north-south road and had been “firing at any vehicle that tries to go along it”.

AFP journalists are not inside Gaza City, following Israeli warnings that the territory’s northern areas must be considered a war zone.

Israel has for weeks warned Palestinians civilians to flee the northern half of the Gaza Strip, while also cutting off normal supplies of water, food, fuel and other essentials to the long-blockaded territory.

The United Nations reported on Sunday that civil order was starting to break down after “thousands of people” had ransacked its warehouses looking for tinned food, flour, oil and hygiene supplies.

According to the UN, all 10 hospitals in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders, despite sheltering thousands of patients and about 117,000 of the displaced.

Among those being treated are intensive care patients, infants and elderly people on life support systems.

The head of the World Health Organisation said calls to evacuate Al Quds hospital in Gaza City were “deeply concerning”.

“We reiterate, it’s impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Mohamed Al Talmas, who has taken shelter in Gaza’s biggest hospital Al Shifa, said “the ground shook” there with intense Israeli raids.

‘Collective punishment’ 

UN chief Antonio Guterres has warned the situation was getting “more desperate by the hour” and warned against the “collective punishment” of Palestinians.

The International Criminal Court Lead Prosecutor Karim Khan warned Israel on Sunday that preventing access to humanitarian aid could be a “crime”.

Limited aid has entered Gaza from Egypt under a US-brokered deal, but its volume has fallen far short of the hundreds of trucks a day aid agencies say are needed.

The UN reported that 33 trucks carrying water, food and medical supplies had entered Gaza on Sunday, bringing to 117 the total that have entered through the Rafah crossing since the resumption of aid on October 21.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — Desperate Palestinians in Gaza burst into aid centres after more than three weeks of siege and bombardment, the UN said on Sunday.

Despite calls for a humanitarian ceasefire, international outrage and the potential risk to hostages held in Gaza, Israel has intensified the war.

Health ministry in Gaza said the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 8,000 people, mainly civilians and half of them children.

Panic and fear have surged inside the Palestinian territory, where the UN says more than half of its 2.4 million residents are displaced and thousands of buildings destroyed.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the situation was "growing more desperate by the hour" as casualties increase and essential supplies of food, water, medicine and shelter dwindle.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said "thousands of people" broke into several of its warehouses and distribution centres in Gaza, grabbing basic survival items like wheat flour and hygiene supplies.

“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down,” it said.

Outside a bakery in southern Gaza’s Rafah, Etidal Al Masri was queueing but did not know if she would get bread.

Having been displaced from the northern Strip, Masri lamented that Gazans “must now queue for bread, toilets and even for sleep”.

Communications were down for days after Israel cut internet lines, although connectivity was gradually returning on Sunday.

Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, voiced shock at the suffering in Gaza and urged all sides to de-escalate.

“This is a catastrophic failing that the world must not tolerate,” she said.

A US government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 40 more aid trucks may enter Gaza on Sunday and that Israel was committed to allowing 100 to arrive daily.

A Gaza health ministry spokesman said “hundreds” were killed and wounded on Sunday in “unprecedented” Israeli military action.

Israeli fighter jets again dropped leaflets over Gaza City on Saturday, warning residents that the northern area was now a “battlefield” and they should “evacuate immediately”.

After dozens of aid trucks entered the territory in recent days, far below the estimated needs, Hagari vowed humanitarian efforts would expand.

RAFAH, Occupied Palestine — Etidal Al Masri got up before dawn to reach the bakery in Rafah in the hopes of getting enough bread to feed her relatives who were bombed out of their home.

She waited in line for ages, but by the time it was her turn, the bread had run out.

Masri fled her home in the northern Beit Hanun area to seek shelter at a school run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in this southern Gaza town, but has been finding it hard to get basic supplies.

"Because of the chaos, my turn didn't come," she told AFP outside the bakery where huge crowds people come to seek bread as war-torn Gaza struggles with dire shortages of food, water and fuel.

More than half of Gaza’s population, some 1.4 million people, have fled their homes since the war erupted on October 7, with Israel relentlessly bombarding the territory after Hamas fighters surprise attack.

Outside Al Quds bakery in Rafah, an AFP journalist saw hundreds of people waiting.

Mohammed Qaranawi, who is hosting 25 people in his home, said as well as the bombardments, the bakeries were also struggling with a dire lack of fuel.

“You can wait in line for hours and in the end you don’t get a turn to get bread,” he said.

Abdul Nasser Al Ajrami, head of Gaza’s bakery association, said 60 per cent of businesses were out of action.

“We’re struggling to provide flour, gas and electricity,” he said.

“A lot of workers can’t reach bakeries because of the strikes and the risk of death,” he added.

Queueing from 5:00 am 

Bakery owner Suleiman Al Huli said he had witnessed some of the “most extreme” scenes since the Nakba of 1948, when 760,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation.

“I feel upset, I can’t give everyone bread. The bakery is hand-operated and produces 30 bundles [of pitta] an hour... this is much less than people need,” he said.

One resident told AFP she had gone to three bakeries since dawn in search of bread.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has described the conditions as “unimaginably desperate” after Israel cut normal supplies of food, water and power to Gaza, notably blocking fuel.

“WFP was relying on 23 bakeries to feed 220,000 people a day... only two are functional,” spokeswoman Shaza Moghraby told journalists.

While limited aid convoys have reached Gaza, deemed woefully inadequate by the UN, no fuel has been brought in from neighbouring Egypt.

Bakery worker Sami Salman Al Huli said thousands of people tended to gather outside the bakery from as early as 5:00 am (03:00 GMT) in order to get bread.

“We can only cover 300 people and the numbers are several times greater... I try to give people one bundle of bread [to share],” said the 30-year-old.

As well as worrying about the vast needs, Huli also has to contend with the relentless strikes.

“I’m afraid the bakery will be bombed, like bakeries were bombed in Gaza City and elsewhere,” he said.