Region

WASHINGTON — American and allied forces in Syria were targeted on Monday in an attack that did not cause casualties, a US official said, after a militant group claimed to have launched drones at Washington’s troops.

Armed factions close to Iran have threatened to attack US interests over Washington’s support for Israel since Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in a shock cross-border attack from Gaza on October 7.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 5,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.

“An attack against US and coalition forces occurred early this morning in Syria. There were no injuries or damage,” a US defence official said, referring to the international coalition against Daesh extremist group.

The US official did not provide specifics on the attack, but a group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said earlier in the day that it had launched drones against American forces at Al Tanf and Al Malikiyah in Syria.

The same group also claimed to have targeted US troops in Iraq on Saturday — an attack the United States said it could not confirm — while American forces shot down two drones in the country last week.

The United States has some 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as part of efforts to combat Daesh, which once held significant territory in both countries but was pushed back by local forces supported by international air strikes.

BAGHDAD — Iraq on Monday condemned as "unacceptable" attacks against bases on its territory housing US forces, which have multiplied since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.

Since Wednesday, at least five rocket and drone attacks have targeted three Iraqi military bases where American troops are stationed as part of the international coalition set up to fight the Daesh group.

"The attacks that target Iraqi bases that house advisers from the international coalition in Iraq are unacceptable," Iraq's military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement.

Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani had "directed all the security services to... pursue the elements responsible for these attacks", he added.

Most of the attacks have been claimed by a group called "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" on Telegram channels affiliated with Shiite factions loyal to Iran, the sworn enemy of Israel.

Without directly mentioning the attacks on the Iraqi bases, the United States, a close Israeli ally, on Friday ordered the evacuation of all non-essential staff from its embassy in Baghdad and consulate in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Iraqi government is supported by pro-Iran parties, and has repeatedly condemned Israel’s strikes on Gaza. 

But Baghdad needs to preserve its relations with the United States, which has 2,500 troops deployed on Iraqi soil to advise and train the Iraqi army.

BEIRUT — More than 19,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid an uptick in tensions between Israel and Hizbollah at the country's southern border, figures released on Monday by a United Nations agency showed.

"An increase in cross-border incidents" has resulted in the displacement of 19,646 people in Lebanon, "both within the south and elsewhere within the country", said the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

"We expect the numbers to rise as the cross-border tensions continue" or if there is an escalation in violence, IOM spokesperson Mohammedali Abunajela told AFP in a statement.

Iran-backed Hizbollah has launched attacks on Israel, raising fears the group intends open a front from Lebanon in support of ally Hamas.

Israel has carried out cross-border strikes and bombardments on Lebanon, while Palestinian groups have also launched limited infiltration attempts into Israel.

Dozens of communities have been told to evacuate in Israel, while thousands of civilians in Lebanon have fled, many heading to other parts of the south or areas in or outside the capital Beirut.

Lebanon, grappling with political paralysis and a four-year-long economic crisis, has not implemented an evacuation plan, but Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said the country was developing an emergency response "as a precaution".

'Fragile health system' 

The IOM's Abunajela said that "amidst a deteriorating economic situation and the significant rise in poverty across all populations in Lebanon, internal displacements may add additional stress to the resources of host communities".

Most of the displaced are currently "sheltered in host and family settings, while there are three designated schools, managed by local authorities that are also used as shelters", Abunajela said.

An AFP correspondent last week saw families taking refuge in public schools converted into shelters in the southern city of Tyre, where authorities said they were looking for a place to open a fourth centre.

At least 40 people have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border, according to an AFP tally, including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.

Four people have been killed in Israel, including three soldiers and one civilian.

While the tit-for-tat exchanges have so far been relatively contained, analysts have warned that the chances of Hizbollah scaling up involvement could hinge on any Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

Lebanon’s crisis has crippled basic services, from electricity to health care and education.

“The country’s health system is facing severe resource shortages, including medicines” and medical personnel, Abunajela said.

“In this context, responding to large-scale displacement and health causalities that might occur... may overwhelm the already fragile health system,” he warned.

EL ARISH, Egypt — Under the roar of military aircraft, workers were rushing to offload supplies at Egypt's El Arish airport as aid trickles into the stricken Gaza Strip after more than two weeks of war with Israel.

Officials barked orders and forklift trucks revved their engines, swerving at speed on the tarmac as they carried items including vital food and medicine for the Palestinian enclave.

Planeloads of aid have been landing for days at El Arish, about 45 kilometres from the Rafah border crossing, the only route into Gaza after all Israeli checkpoints were closed following a shock Hamas assault on October 7.

But it was only over the weekend that the first supplies were allowed to reach Gaza, a narrow enclave of some 2.4 million inhabitants, under blockade for years and complete seige by Israel after the latest violence spiralled into war.

Three convoys of aid totalling about 50 trucks have cleared the Rafah crossing since Saturday, reaching a populace in dire need of food, water and medical supplies.

The United Nations estimates Gaza requires about 100 trucks a day to meet the needs of residents, almost half of whom are believed to have been displaced by Israel's bombing campaign.

In less than an hour on Sunday, two Qatari planes and one Indian aircraft, all carrying aid, touched down at El Arish, with scores of Egyptian Red Crescent workers scrambling to unload them.

Youssef Al Mulla, a humanitarian aid worker with the Qatar Development Fund, said the Gulf emirate had supplied over 100 tonnes of aid destined for Gaza since the start of the crisis.

“This is the fourth flight that we have sent to El Arish,” he told AFP at the airport, explaining the first delivery had been “37 tonnes in two flights and these two flights have around 86 tonnes of aid”.

While Mulla, who accompanied one of the flights from Qatar, was hopeful all the supplies would reach Gaza, he said only two trucks of aid from Qatar had crossed at Rafah as of Sunday.

The delays meant further aid earmarked for Gaza had remained in Doha, he said.

“It’s ready to be sent at any time,” he said, explaining that there was a reluctance to stockpile further aid in Egypt where warehouses were already filled with supplies for Gaza.

“These two flights were scheduled three days ago. But [because of] the situation and the blockade of Gaza we have had pending flights for a while,” Mulla added.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths has called the deliveries into Gaza a “small glimmer of hope” but warned its people would “need more, much more”.

The United States has vowed a continued flow of aid under a deal brokered by President Joe Biden with Egyptian and Israeli leaders.

As the first Qatari aircraft departed El Arish on Sunday to return to Doha, the aid it brought stood carefully stacked and waiting on the runway’s apron.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The lives of at least 120 newborn babies on incubators in war-torn Gaza's hospitals are at risk as fuel runs out in the besieged enclave, the UN children's agency warned on Sunday.

More than 1,750 children have already been killed by Israeli strikes launched against the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas surprise attacks, according to the Palestinian territory's health ministry.

Hospitals face a dire lack of medicines, fuel and water not only for the thousands wounded in more than two weeks of the war between Gaza fighters and Israel but also for routine patients.

"We have currently 120 neonates who are in incubators, out of which we have 70 neonates with mechanical ventilation, and of course this is where we are extremely concerned," said UNICEF spokesman Jonathan Crickx.

Power is one of the main worries for the seven specialist wards across Gaza treating premature babies to help with breathing and provide critical support, for example when their organs are not developed enough.

Israel ordered a complete blockade of the territory after the Hamas attacks, in which Hamas killed 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

Amid widespread electricity cuts, the World Health Organisation warned on Thursday that hospitals had already run out of fuel for generators.

The WHO said that about 1,000 people needing dialysis will also be at risk if the generators stop.

Twenty aid trucks crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday but there was no fuel in the consignment.

Israel fears that fuel could help Hamas, although the limited supplies still in Gaza were being diverted to keep the generators for medical equipment running.

“If they [babies] are put in mechanical ventilation incubators, by definition, if you cut the electricity, we are worried about their lives,” the UNICEF spokesman told AFP.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday that 130 premature babies were in danger of dying due to the lack of fuel.

Around 160 women give birth each day in Gaza, according to the UN Population Fund, which estimates there are 50,000 pregnant women across the territory of 2.4 million people.

While Israel says its strikes are aimed at Hamas, children make up a huge proportion of the 4,385 dead reported by the Hamas-run health ministry.

Whole families, including pregnant women, have been killed in strikes and each day parents can be seen in devastated streets carrying the bodies of infants in white shrouds.

Doctors at Najjar hospital in Rafah spoke on Thursday of how they had tried in vain to save an unborn infant from a woman killed in an air strike on her family’s home.

Hours earlier, eight children were killed as they slept in a house in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

RAFAH, occupied Palestine — An aid convoy carrying desperately needed fuel entered Gaza on Sunday as Israel intensified strikes on the Palestinian enclave suffering a "catastrophic" humanitarian situation.

With fears of a wider conflagration mounting, Iran said the region could spiral "out of control" and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon's Hezbollah that an intervention would be "the mistake of its life".

Hamas fighetrs stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

It was the worst attack on civilians in Israel's history and coincided with the end of the religious holiday of Sukkot.

Israel's bombing campaign has killed more than 4,600 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

More than 40 per cent of Gaza's housing has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN citing local authorities and Israel has halted food, water, fuel and electricity supplies.

Sunday's 17-truck aid delivery through Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the second such operation in two days, after 20 lorries arrived on Saturday following negotiations and US pressure.

An AFP journalist saw six trucks enter from stores in the crossing. A Palestinian official at the crossing confirmed the trucks were carrying fuel.

Israel worries that Hamas could use fuel brought into Gaza to manufacture weapons and explosives.

The United Nations estimates that about 100 trucks per day are required to meet the needs of 2.4 million Gazans given the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned fuel supplies would run out in three days.

“Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance,” Philippe Lazzarini said.

Israeli attacks intensify 

Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops around the enclave for an anticipated ground invasion.

Israel increased its attacks overnight in and around Gaza City, , military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday.

Hamas said overnight raids on the Gaza Strip killed at least 80 people and destroyed more than 30 homes.

In central Gaza’s Deir Al Balah, an AFP journalist saw the bodies of children lie on the bloodied floor of a morgue.

A man clutched his dead toddler and people wept as they identified the bodies of their relatives.

Smoke billowed from sites across Gaza targeted by Israeli strikes.

Om Ahmad Abu Sanjar was sleeping in her Rafah home when she “woke up to the glass shattering on us and bricks falling”.

“We got out miraculously,” she told AFP.

The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function, with the UN reporting dozens of unidentified bodies were buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.

Regional tensions rise 

Israel has warned more than 1 million residents in northern Gaza to move south for their safety, and the UN says more than half of the territory’s population is now internally displaced.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to remain in and around Gaza City in the north, unwilling or unable to leave.

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that if the United States and Israel “do not immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza, anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control”.

Fresh fire was also exchanged across Israel’s border with Lebanon, which the Israeli military warned could be dragged into the war by Hamas ally Hizbollah.

 ‘Brothers, stop!’ 

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday that he had increased US military readiness in the Middle East.

The Pentagon said the move aimed to defend US ally Israel amid what it called “escalations by Iran” and its proxies across the region.

It also said it was notifying additional troops to “prepare to deploy orders” without specifying how many or when they could be dispatched.

A ground invasion poses myriad challenges for Israeli troops, who are likely to face Hamas booby traps and tunnels.

Israel must also weigh the safety of the 212 hostages it says were abducted by the militants.

After a Cairo peace summit involving regional and Western leaders finished without a joint statement, Pope Francis pleaded for the bloodshed to end during his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome on Sunday.

“War is always a defeat, it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop!”

DAMASCUS — Israeli strikes on Sunday put out of service war-torn Syria's two main airports, state media reported citing a military source, with the transport ministry saying flights were re-routed to Latakia.

While Israeli strikes have repeatedly caused the grounding of flights at the government-controlled airports in the capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, it is the second time simultaneous strikes have hit the facilities since this month's conflict between Israel and Hamas began.

"At around 5:25 am [02:25 GMT], the Israeli enemy carried out... an air attack... targeting Damascus and Aleppo international airports, leading to the death of a civilian worker at Damascus airport and wounding another," the military source said in the statement carried by state news agency SANA.

The wounded worker later died, state television reported, citing a transport ministry source.

The military source said the “simultaneous” strikes came “from the direction of the Mediterranean west of Latakia and from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan”, according to the statement.

“Material damage to the airports’ runways put them out of service,” the statement added.

The transport ministry said flights were diverted to Latakia airport.

On October 12, simultaneous strikes knocked both Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service, Syria said at the time.

Last weekend, Israeli strikes targeted Aleppo airport, wounding five people, a war monitor reported, and also putting it out of service, according to the authorities.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbour, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hizbollah fighters, as well as Syrian army positions.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch foe Iran, to expand its presence there.

TYRE, LEBANON — Shocked by images of dead children in Gaza, Mustafa Al Sayyid quickly whisked his family to the closest shelter when Israeli strikes began near his village in southern Lebanon this week. 

“What we are seeing on television — the massacres happening in Gaza, the children — it cuts your heart to pieces,” said the 53-year-old from Beit Lif, barely 6 kilometres from the Israeli border. 

“If I wasn’t afraid this would happen to us, I wouldn’t have left my home,” said Sayyid, who has two wives and 11 children, around half of whom are under 10. 

The family is among nearly 4,000 people who have fled flashpoint areas near the Israeli frontier and flocked to the southern city of Tyre, according to local officials. 

Around half are staying in three public schools that have been converted into makeshift shelters, while the rest hunker down with relatives or friends. 

The scale of displacement has gradually swelled since the Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise October 7 assault on southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 200 in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. 

Since then, some 4,385 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed in relentless Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The tensions have spread to the Lebanese-Israeli border, where near-daily tit-for-tat attacks have emptied out entire villages. 

At least 22 people, including four civilians, have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. And at least three soldiers and one civilian have died in Israel. 

Sayyid, whose brother was killed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, said he wants to avoid any more family deaths. 

“All my children are young. If the apocalypse comes, how will I get them all out in one go?” he wondered inside a classroom stripped of desks and dotted with thin mattresses.

“So I thought, better to leave now.”

‘Shelters at full capacity’ 

Fears of a spillover loom large in Lebanon’s border villages, which were occupied by Israeli forces for 22 years before their withdrawal in 2000.

A steady stream of families, mostly from the pummelled village of Aita Al Shaab, queued at the Tyre municipality this week to secure a spot in one of the classrooms.

“We have reached full capacity in all of our shelters,” said Tyre Mayor Hassan Dbouk. “Now we are looking for a place to open a fourth centre.”

In the border village of Dhayra, farms and olive groves have been abandoned at the height of the harvest season.

Farmers already crushed by a four-year-long economic crisis in Lebanon are bracing for an uncertain fate — even if the fighting abruptly stops. 

“Everyone in Dhayra relies on farming. We have nothing but God and agriculture,” said Mussa Suwaid, 47, speaking outside the Tyre shelter where he has been staying for a week.

“I have five sheep, each worth around $500. I left them without food and ran away,” he added. 

He also was forced to leave behind his 88-year-old father and his cow.

“He told me he would rather die than abandon the cow and his home,” Suwaid said.

‘Sadness underneath’ 

Ravaged by an economic crisis that has been widely blamed on official corruption and ineptitude, Lebanon has not implemented an evacuation plan.

Instead, the villagers have left under their own steam, strapping bags to motorcycles or hitching rides with neighbours.

Yulla Suwaid, unrelated to Mussa, said she waited for two hours in a pool of her own blood before her brother came to save her during an Israeli bombardment that destroyed their Dhayra home last Wednesday.

The 43-year-old school teacher was running down the stairs when the strike sent part of the wall crashing down on her legs, leaving her badly wounded. 

“If I had completely lost my legs, what would I have done? Who would have taken care of me?” she asked at a shelter in Tyre, both legs fully bandaged after surgery. 

In a nearby school, Ahmad from Beit Lif said he had planned to get married this month.

Instead, the 26-year-old buried his father, who died of cancer, as the Israelis shelled nearby. He then fled to Tyre with his fiancee’s family.

Declining to provide his surname due to security concerns, Ahmad fought back tears as he recalled one of his father’s last actions.

“I made him go to my fiancee’s family to ask for her hand in marriage,” he told AFP. 

“I smile, but there is a lot of sadness underneath.”