Region

BEIRUT — Six people, including two children, were killed on Tuesday in Russian strikes on a displacement camp in Syria’s northwest, the country’s last main rebel bastion, a war monitor said.

Tensions have soared in northwest Syria since a drone attack on a military academy graduation ceremony in Homs earlier this month killed dozens of people, with the government blaming “terrorists”.

“Six civilians, including a woman and two of her children, were killed and eight others injured after Russian warplanes carried out two air strikes on a camp for displaced people” in the west of Idlib province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), led by Al Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of Idlib province and parts of the neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

“Russian forces have increased their air strikes since the Homs attack, while HTS intensified its drone strikes,” observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

On Sunday, Syrian army shelling in the country’s northwest killed six children, four from the same family, said the British-based group with a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The attack on the military academy in Homs was one of the bloodiest to hit government forces since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011.

Civil war erupted in Syria after President Bashar Assad’s government crushed peaceful protests.

The conflict has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions after spiralling into a devastating war involving foreign armies, militias and extremists.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday alleged violations of international law as Israel pounds Gaza, and urged an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to bring in relief.

"I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law," Guterres told a Security Council session, without explicitly naming Israel.

Guterres, who personally travelled to the crossing between Egypt and Gaza in a push to let in assistance, welcomed the crossing of three aid convoys so far through the Rafah crossing.

"But it is a drop of aid in an ocean of need. In addition, our UN fuel supplies in Gaza will run out in a matter of days. That would be another disaster," Guterres said.

“To ease epic suffering, make the delivery of aid easier and safer, and facilitate the release of hostages, I reiterate my appeal for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

The Security Council session is bringing together top diplomats including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has previously rejected calls for a ceasefire, saying it would only allow Hamas to regroup.

More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip in retaliatory Israeli bombardments, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said.

The United Nations on Tuesday called for improved coordination among humanitarian groups in making sure the small amount of aid now moving into the Gaza Strip contained only the most needed items.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned it would be forced to stop working across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday unless there were urgent fuel deliveries to the war-torn territory.

“If we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the Gaza Strip as of tomorrow night,” UNRWA said on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.

Aid agencies have sounded the alarm about the lack of fuel, which is used to power vital services in Gaza such as hospitals which are relying on generators.

“Time is running out. We urgently need fuel,” Juliette Touma, UNRWA communications director, told AFP.

Six hospitals across Gaza have already shut down due to the lack of fuel, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Tuesday.

The relief agency also said that some of the food delivered into Gaza so far, such as rice and lentils, had been impractical given the dwindling availability of fresh water and fuel.

Israel has cut off water, food, fuel and energy supplies to Gaza, and only a trickle of aid has been allowed in from Egypt in recent days under a US-brokered deal.

“An additional challenge in a very limited flow of supplies is that we are not really receiving the most needed supplies for Gaza, or the most relevant,” UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Alrifai said.

“In one of the shipments over the last couple of days, we received boxes of rice and lentils,” she told journalists at the UN in Geneva via video-link from the Jordanian capital Amman, where UNRWA has its headquarters.

“But for people to cook lentils and rice, they need water and gas. And therefore these kinds of supplies, while very generous and well intended, are not very usable right now,” she said.

Alrifai added that before October 7, around 500 trucks a day were entering Gaza from Israel and Egypt, with a mixture of commercial goods, food, aid and fuel.

But only a few dozen trucks carrying food, medicine and water have entered Gaza via the southern border with Egypt since a deal entered into operation on Saturday.

“We will need to get better as a consortium of humanitarians in sending very explicit lists of what is most needed,” Alrifai said.

Medical aid 

Meanwhile, the WHO said it had been unable to distribute any life-saving health supplies from the truck convoys to major hospitals in northern Gaza, because of a lack of security guarantees.

It said the main Al-Shifa hospital in the north now had three patients for every two beds.

“In addition to the hospitals that have had to close due to damage and attacks, six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have already shut down due to lack of fuel,” the WHO said in a statement.

Medical supplies have been delivered to four hospitals in southern Gaza and medics “took boxes of supplies off the trucks and straight into operating theatres, where doctors have been performing surgeries without anaesthesia or other basic surgical supplies”, the agency said.

RAFAH, Occupied Palestine — Two elderly Hamas hostages were airlifted to an Israeli hospital to be reunited with family on Tuesday, as the United States demanded Palestinian resistance fighters release more than 200 other captives before Gaza ceasefire talks are considered.

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

Hamas fighters took 222 people hostage following the October 7 attack on Israel. The hostages include dozens of dual nationals and foreigners.

More than 5,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed across the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments, according to the latest toll from the health ministry in Gaza.

Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and their octogenarian husbands were among the hostages seized on October 7.

Hamas released Cooper and Lifshitz on Monday citing "compelling humanitarian" reasons, after mediation by Qatar and Egypt.

Their release comes days after a US mother and daughter were freed.

An AFP journalist saw a military helicopter bringing Cooper and Lifshitz to a medical centre in Tel Aviv early on Tuesday.

 'Ceasefire calls' 

In response to the worst attack in its 75-year history, Israel launched operation "Swords of Iron", besieging Gaza and firing a near-continuous barrage of strikes to "erase Hamas" from the enclave.

While the Israeli military has claimed success in "eliminating high-ranking commanders" and destroying Hamas infrastructure, humanitarian groups have said that Palestinian civilians are paying too steep a price for the campaign.

AFP has not been able to independently verify the death toll given by Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, but the scale of the destruction is clear.

Thousands of buildings have been levelled and more than a million people are believed to have been displaced in the besieged territory.

Gaza City resident Ayman Abu Shamalah was among the tens of thousands who heeded an Israeli warning to flee to south Gaza.

Despite the move, he told AFP that his pregnant wife, their three-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were killed in an Israeli air strike on Rafah in southern Gaza.

“They put my son’s shattered body in a blue bag,” he said, sobbing.

Across Gaza, water, food and other basic supplies are running out. Only a trickle of aid is being allowed to cross into Gaza from Egypt.

 ‘Well prepared’ 

Israel has shown little sign of slowing its offensive.

On Tuesday, Gaza’s Hamas government said that Israeli air strikes during the night killed at least 140 people.

But the timing of an anticipated full-scale ground offensive remains unclear.

“We are well prepared for the ground operations in the south,” chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told troops.

“The Southern Command has quality operational plans. There are tactical, operative and strategic considerations that have provided additional time,” he said.

 ‘Nowhere else to go’ 

Chief among those considerations may be the labyrinth of tunnels and strong points that Hamas is believed to have developed to thwart any Israeli invasion.

But there are also fears about how Hamas’s allies around the Middle East would respond to a ground war.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War has reported an uptick in attacks on Israeli and US targets from Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

There are daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah militant group.

At least 41 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally, mostly combatants but also at least four civilians, including a Reuters journalist.

And four people have been killed in Israel, three soldiers and a civilian.

The pace of evacuations has increased on both sides of the border, with the UN saying nearly 20,000 people had fled villages in south Lebanon as the fighting rages.

Israel has also ordered the evacuation of thousands of people from communities near its northern border.

RAFAH, Occupied Palestine — Gaza's health ministry said on Monday that more than 5,000 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel launched its withering bombing campaign more than two weeks ago.

Alarm has surged about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the war sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack that, Israeli officials say, killed more than 1,400 people. Hamas also took more than 200 hostages.

On a day when Israel's army reported more than 300 new strikes within 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said the death toll had surged above 5,000, more than 2,000 of them children, in figures AFP has not been able to independently verify.

Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people displaced in the territory that has been under siege and largely deprived of water, food and other basic supplies.

About a dozen trucks carrying desperately needed aid, the third convoy in three days, arrived inside Gaza from Egypt on Monday through Rafah, Gaza's only crossing not controlled by Israel.

The United States, which has brokered the entry of the aid convoys, has vowed a "continued flow" of relief goods into Gaza, even as UN aid agencies have said far more is needed.

Fighting raged unabated overnight, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would "erase Hamas" and as a full-scale ground invasion loomed.

Gaza's Hamas-controlled government media office said that "more than 60 were martyred in the raids" during the night, including 17 in a single strike that hit a house in Gaza's north, and at least 10 others were killed in new strikes early Monday.

The Israeli military said it had hit "over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip" in the past 24 hours.

Call for blood donations

Rafah resident Mohammed Abu Sabalah said he had returned home from the local mosque after dawn prayers on Monday and that “a quarter of an hour later there was a bombing”.

“We couldn’t see anything because of the thick smoke,” he said, adding that “we thank God that we’ve emerged safe and sound” with “only a few windows and doors destroyed”.

Israeli forces are massed near the Gaza border, and smaller units have already carried out limited incursions, targeting Hamas and hoping to rescue hostages, whose number Israel now puts at 222.

Tensions have been inflamed in the occupied West Bank, where 95 Palestinians have been killed in clashes involving Israeli forces or settlers since fighting began in Gaza, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

In Gaza, where thousands have been wounded, the health ministry issued a statement saying “citizens are called upon to immediately go to hospitals and blood bank branches to donate blood”.

Alarm has grown about the dire needs of the 2.4 million civilians trapped inside the 40 kilometre long coastal strip that was already blockaded and impoverished before the war.

Children killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis were on Monday laid to rest in a makeshift grave, while in Rafah men were filling plastic jerrycans from containers with now scare safe drinking water.

US President Joe Biden brokered the passage of aid convoys with Egyptian and Israeli leaders in talks last week, but the United Nations estimates Gaza needs about 100 trucks of relief goods every day.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said Sunday’s delivery of food, water and medical supplies was “another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid”.

“But they need more, much more.”

Israel has rejected the entry of fuel into Gaza, fearing Hamas could use it for weapons and explosives.

This has sparked warnings that soon Gaza’s ambulances, hospital incubators for infants and water desalination plants will soon stop functioning.

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.