Region

BEIRUT — Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid deadly exchanges between Iran-backed Hizbollah fighters and the Israeli army, a United Nations agency said on Friday.

A total of 28,965 people have been displaced, mainly in the country's south, the International Organisation for Migration said in an update, adding that the figure had risen by 37 per cent since October 23.

Some have found refuge with family members elsewhere in the country, while those who can afford it have been able to rent apartments on a short-term basis.

But with Lebanon in the grips of an economic crisis that has plunged most of the population into poverty, some are living in makeshift shelters in the south's larger towns.

In Lebanon, at least 58 people have been killed in the cross-border exchanges of fire, most of them Hizbollah fighters but also including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.

THE HAGUE — The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister on Thursday said Israel's offensive in Gaza was a "war of revenge", as he called for a ceasefire in the conflict.

The visit of Riyad Al Maliki to the Hague comes as Israel said a column of tanks and infantry had launched an overnight raid into Hamas-controlled Gaza.

"This time the war that Israel is waging is different. This time... it's a war of revenge," Maliki said in The Hague.

"This war has no real objective than the total destruction of every livable corner in Gaza," Maliki told reporters at the Palestinian Authority's mission to The Hague.

He said the need for a ceasefire was a top priority to get aid into Gaza, where the main UN agency warned Wednesday operations would cease as it was running out of fuel.

"First we need to end this aggression, this one-sided war and then we need to call for a ceasefire," he said, adding that "a ceasefire is essential... for the distribution of humanitarian aid".

'Humanitarian pauses' 

But Maliki stressed that so-called "humanitarian pauses" would not alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

European Union leaders were set on Thursday to call for "humanitarian corridors and pauses" in order for aid to reach civilians in Gaza.

Maliki said he was not confident EU officials "would go for a full cease-fire.

"But I am confident that they will have a very serious discussion and they will be able understand the difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire."

"A humanitarian pause is not going to help in bringing in... the necessary distribution of such goods into Gaza."

Maliki also said the only long-term solution in the conflict would be a return to the two-state solution, the framework proposed for separate Israeli and Palestinian states.

"It will be difficult, but not impossible to go to the two-state solution. But what is the alternative?

"We don't have an alternative."

On Wednesday, Maliki met top officials at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, including its chief prosecutor Karim Khan.

“The situation in Gaza is so dangerous now that it needs immediate intervention by the [ICC] prosecutor,” Maliki said, accusing Israel of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Palestinian Authority was “working with the ICC prosecutor”, he added.

The Palestinians have made a second submission to the UN’s highest International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is also based in The Hague, he said.

The UN’s general Assembly has asked the ICJ’s judges for an advisory legal opinion on Israel’s occupation in Palestinian territories.

BEIRUT — Soldiers and volunteers on Thursday were battling a blaze on Lebanon's southern border caused by Israeli bombing overnight, local officials said, as Israel and Hizbollah exchange near-daily cross-border fire.

Since Palestinian group Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, Lebanon's southern border has seen tit-for-tat exchanges between Israel and Hizbollah, a Hamas ally.

Mayor of the border village of Alma Al Shaab, Jean Ghafari, said fire broke out after Israeli bombing late Wednesday.

"The blaze reached the edges of the village after midnight" and is still burning, he told AFP, adding that it "has come close to houses".

Security forces, civil defence personnel, United Nations peacekeepers and volunteers were battling the blaze but "have been unable to completely control it because of strong winds", Ghafari added.

The municipality said some 70 per cent of the village's population had fled due to Israeli attacks.

An AFP photographer saw fire near houses on the outskirts of Alma Al Shaab and burnt olive trees, with the blaze mainly concentrated between the village and the coastal city of Naqura.

“Overnight [Israeli] bombing with phosphorus led to the fire, which has affected a broad forested area and spread due to the high winds,” Naqura Mayor Abbas Awada told AFP in a statement.

In recent weeks, Lebanon’s official National News Agency and Lebanese paramedics have reported fires and injuries due to white phosphorus, while Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using the incendiary weapon in its war against Hamas in Gaza, and in southern Lebanon.

Israel has denied the allegations.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, whose party is allied with Hizbollah, on Thursday condemned Israel’s use of “phosphorus bombs” along Lebanon’s border and blamed “the international community” for the blazes, alluding to Western military support for Israel.

Hamas shock attack saw fighters pour from Gaza into Israel, killing 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has retaliated with relentless strikes that have killed more than 7,000, also mainly civilians.

Exchanges of fire across the Lebanon-Israel border have since killed at least 57 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally, mostly Hizbollah combatants but also four civilians, including Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.

Four people have been killed on the Israeli side, including one civilian.

Phosphorus, a substance that catches fire on contact with the air, is used to create smokescreens to hide troop movements, illuminate the battlefield or destroy buildings by fire.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 7,028 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes since October 7.

Some 2,913 children and 1,709 women are among the dead, marking the highest number of war fatalities in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005.

In southern Gaza, a bereaved Palestinian, Umm Omar Al Khaldi, recounted to AFP how she witnessed her neighbours being killed in an Israeli strike that reduced the house to rubble, with many feared buried beneath.

“We saw them getting bombarded, the children got bombarded while their mother was hugging them,” the woman said, desperately pleading for help from the outside world.

“Where are the Arabs, where is humanity?” she said. “Have mercy on us, have mercy on us.”

The war’s surging death toll is by far the highest since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the small coastal territory in 2005, a period that has seen four previous Israeli wars on Gaza.

Entire neighbourhoods have been razed, surgeons are operating without anaesthetic on some of the wounded, and ice-cream trucks have become makeshift morgues.

In chaotic scenes, volunteer emergency crew and neighbours have clawed, sometimes with their bare hands, through broken concrete and sand to pull out civilian casualties.

All too often they recover only their corpses, which have piled up, wrapped in blood-stained white shrouds.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” said Lynne Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.

US President Joe Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, has joined the calls for it to “protect innocent civilians” and to follow the “laws of war” as it pursues Hamas targets.

Biden, also contemplating the future, stressed that “when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next”.

He reiterated that Washington supports a two-state solution with independent Israeli and Palestinian states.

“It means a concentrated effort for all the parties, Israelis, Palestinians, regional partners, global leaders, to put us on a path toward peace,” said the US president.

For now though, the raging war has sparked fears of a regional conflagration if it draws in more of Israel’s enemies such as Iran-backed Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon.

There has also been a rise of attacks on Israel’s top ally the United States, which has a vast network of military bases across the Middle East.

About 2,500 American troops are stationed in Iraq and some 900 in Syria to help fight remnants of the Daesh extremist group.

The Pentagon said there were 10 attacks on US and allied forces in Iraq and three in Syria between October 17 and 24, involving a “mix of one-way attack drones and rockets”.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — The main UN aid agency in besieged Gaza warned it will have to stop operations by the end of Wednesday because it is running out of fuel as Hamas said the death toll from Israeli strikes had surged by more than 700 in a single day.

Alarm has grown about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in the heavily bombarded Gaza Strip where one doctor said he was forced to perform emergency surgery on the wounded without anaesthetic.

Israel has cut off impoverished Gaza's usual water, food and other supplies, and fewer than 70 relief trucks have entered since the war started, "a drop of aid in an ocean of need", warned UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Inside the battered Palestinian territory, Abu Ali Zaarab, whose family house in Rafah was bombed, charged angrily that "they're not waging war on Hamas, they're waging war on children... It's a massacre."

Tempers flared earlier at the United Nations where Guterres decried the "epic suffering" in Gaza and the "collective punishment" of its 2.4 million people, drawing a furious response from Israel.

US President Joe Biden brokered the entry of relief trucks via Egypt, shared the concern that the aid lifeline is "not fast enough".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "food, water, medicine and other essential humanitarian assistance must be able to flow into Gaza" and that "humanitarian pauses must be considered for these purposes".

As the Gaza war has raged, violence has also risen sharply in the occupied West Bank, where health officials said more than 100 Palestinians had been killed, mostly in raids by Israeli troops or in clashes with Israeli settlers.

 'This is a tragedy' 

On the 19th day of Israeli air and artillery strikes and a near-total land, sea and air blockade of Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA warned operations are at breaking point.

"If we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the Gaza Strip," said the agency which provides aid to 600,000 displaced in Gaza, where many families have slept in the open.

Israel has refused to allow fuel shipments into Gaza, fearing Hamas will use it for weapons and explosives and accusing the militant group of stockpiling supplies in large tanks.

Aid groups have warned that more people will die if medical equipment, water desalination plants and ambulances stop running in Gaza, where the only power plant went offline weeks ago.

Patients are already being treated on the floors of hospitals overwhelmed with thousands wounded by bombing. The Red Cross has warned that hospitals, once the generators stop running, “turn into morgues”.

“We performed a number of surgeries on the wounded without anaesthetic,” said Ahmad Abdul Hadi, an orthopaedic surgeon working in the emergency room of Nasser hospital, Khan Yunis.

“It’s tough and painful, but with the lack of resources, what can we do?”

Aid agencies report that emergency shelters and tent cities are heaving under the weight of 1.4 million displaced — more than half the population of the 40 kilometre long coastal strip.

Air strikes have kept hitting Gaza, where Israel says it is targeting Hamas sites, including tunnels and munitions depots, but where many residential buildings have been reduced to rubble.

Amine Abu Jazar, from Rafah, recounted how “at midnight, while we were sleeping, we suddenly felt shrapnel and rocks falling on us”.

“We already have injured and martyrs among us, this is a tragedy. There’s not even any electricity to see each other, the dead or the injured.”

JENIN, Occupied Palestine — More than 100 Palestinians have been killed across the occupied West Bank since war erupted between Israel and Gaza's rulers Hamas on October 7, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

Violence had already spiralled in the West Bank before the Gaza war, with the highest death toll in the Palestinian territory since at least 2005.

Many of the Palestinian deaths came in raids by Israeli troops but there has also been a rise in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, with civilians and fighters killed on both sides.

Since October 7, tensions and bloodshed have surged in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, with the Palestinian death toll reaching 102, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

Over the same period, the Israeli military has reported one member of the security forces killed while taking part in a raid.

In the latest violence, four Palestinians were killed in Jenin and one in Qalqilya, both in the northern West Bank. One Palestinian was also killed in Qalandia, just north of Jerusalem.

The health ministry blamed Israeli “bullets and missiles”.

The Israeli military said it launched a drone strike on “terrorists” in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp, where it said “armed terrorists fired and hurled explosive devices at Israeli security forces”.

In Qalqilya, a military spokeswoman told AFP, soldiers fired on people who “hurled explosive devices, Molotov cocktails and rocks at the forces”.

Troops also opened fire in Qalandia, which the army said came in response to suspects who “threw burning tyres, blocks and IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and shot at forces”.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and withdrew from Gaza in 2005, subsequently imposing a crippling blockade on the coastal territory.