Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel ramped up its ground offensive against Hizbollah along Lebanon's southern coast on Tuesday, after deploying more troops in the country and urging civilians living near the Mediterranean to evacuate.

The military's announcement followed prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to keep fighting a "sacred war" until Israel's enemies -- Hizbollah and Hamas — are defeated. Both groups have vowed no let-up in the multi-front conflict.

Israel expanded its military operations in Lebanon last month after Hizbollah opened a front in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, following the deadliest attack in its history on October 7, 2023.

While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has also focused on securing its northern border to allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return home.

Israel launched a wave of strikes against Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon on September 23, leaving at least 1,110 people dead since then and forcing more than a million people to flee their homes.

Israeli operations have for the most part focused on areas in the south and east of Lebanon, traditional strongholds of Hizbollah, as well as the Iran-backed group's main bastion in south Beirut.

While areas along the southern coast have not been spared, Israel's latest evacuation warning to residents suggested a further expansion of the conflict northwards along the coastline.

On its Telegram channel, the Israeli military said its 146th Division began "limited, localised, targeted operational activities" against Hizbollah targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.

The military had on Monday said it would expand its operations against Hizbollah to south Lebanon's coastal area and warned people to stay away from the shore.

The army "will soon operate in the maritime area against Hizbollah's terrorist activities" south of the Al-Awali river, army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on social media.

On Tuesday, he reiterated the call to residents of south Lebanon not to return home. 

Hizbollah said it had fired a salvo of rockets at Israeli troops in two areas of northern Israel. 

The intensity of Israeli strikes on southern Beirut, which has been repeatedly pounded even after a bombing killed Hizbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, decreased somewhat overnight, AFP correspondents said.

The official National News Agency said more strikes hit southern and eastern Lebanon.

'War of attrition' 

The expansion in the fighting in Lebanon came a day after Israelis and people around the world marked a year since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

The attack sparked Gaza's deadliest-ever war, which according to the health ministry in the territory has killed 41,909 people, also mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

It has since expanded into Lebanon, with Israeli troops battling Hizbollah, while other Iran-backed groups in the region including Yemen's Huthis have also stepped in.

As Iran awaits what Israel has said will be retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage last week, Tehran hailed the October 7 attack.

In a pre-recorded television address, Netanyahu vowed not to give up on the "sacred mission" of achieving the war's goals.

"As long as the enemy threatens our existence and the peace of our country, we will continue to fight. As long as our hostages are still in Gaza, we will continue to fight," said the Israeli leader.

Weakened but not crushed after a year of war, Hamas was defiant, with Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, saying the group would "keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy".

He also said scores of people taken hostage into Gaza last year were enduring a "very difficult" situation.

'No rehabilitation'

A senior Hamas official has acknowledged "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".

When the Gaza war began, Netanyahu vowed to "crush" Hamas, but troops have found themselves returning again to areas to confront signs the movement was trying to rebuild.

Netanyahu has vowed to bring home the hostages, but critics in Israel have accused him of obstructing mediation for a truce and hostage-release deal.

Vigils at massacre sites and rallies called for the return of hostages a year after their abduction.

Late Monday in Tel Aviv, musicians performed as victims' images flashed on screens at a ceremony attended by families and relatives of those killed and abducted.

"We know in our minds, our hearts, in every cell in our bodies: there will be no rehabilitation without the return of the hostages. All of them," said Nitza Corngold, whose son Tal Shoham was kidnapped.

'Graveyard' 

A year since the start of Israel's military offensive in Gaza, swathes of the territory have been reduced to rubble, and nearly all its 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on X Monday the war had turned Gaza into a "graveyard".

Israel's military says 350 soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began on October 27.

People in Gaza just want the war to end.

"I have grown old while watching my children hungry, scared, having nightmares and screaming day and night from the sound of the bombing and shells," said one displaced woman, Israa Abu Matar, 26.

GAZA STRIP, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — One year after Israel unleashed its war on Gaza, the Palestinian territory is unrecognisable and its residents are exhausted by displacement and shortages, with no end in sight.

"It felt like the first day of the war all over again", said Khaled Hawajri, 46, as the Israeli forces bombarded his Gaza neighbourhood on Monday, even as Israel marked the anniversary of Hamas attack.

"Last night we were terrorised by the bombardments from quadcopters and tank shells," said Hawajri, who has been displaced 10 times with his family of seven in the past year.

"We have endured a whole year in the north under bombardment, terror, and fear in the hearts of my children," he said, adding he had staying in Gaza's devastated north because "there is no safe place in the entire Strip".

On Monday, Gaza City was barely recognisable, ravaged by relentless air strikes and fighting.

Residents walked along sand-covered streets stripped of pavements, with buildings either destroyed or left without facades, while piles of rubble littered the roads.

With fuel in short supply and expensive, car traffic was almost nonexistent. Most people walked, cycled or used donkey carts.

"There is no electricity or petroleum products. Even firewood is not available. Food is almost non-existent", said 64-year-old Hussam Mansour, speaking from a street in Gaza City, surrounded by piles of rubble and sand.

The United Nations says 92 per cent of Gaza's roads and more than 84 per cent of its health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war.

Long war 

Mansour and his sons have all been displaced, and his apartment building was destroyed in an air strike.

"Now when I walk the streets, I do not recognise them anymore," he said.

Like Hawajri and Mansour, Gaza's 2.4 million inhabitants have endured hardship, with no signs of relief, even after Israel reassigned divisions to the north of the country where troops are fighting Hamas's Lebanese ally Hizbollah.

About 90 per cent of the population has been displaced at least once, the United Nations says.

"Last night was one of the hardest nights of the war, as if the war had just begun!" said 46-year-old Muhammad Al Muqayyid, displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

"I never imagined the war would last this long," he said.

"A year has gone and we have seen every kind of suffering, disease, hunger, danger and loss."

The Israeli military has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,909 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The UN acknowledges the figures to be reliable.

A year on, Israel has yet to achieve one of its main objectives: securing the return of all those taken hostage on October 7, 2023.

Of the 251 captured that day, 97 are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Israeli military is still carrying out operations in Gaza to free the hostages and crush Hamas, in power since 2007.

"There was a sudden ground invasion by tanks, and people were rushing out of their homes without taking anything with them, just carrying their children and running through the streets with fire and shells raining down on them", Muqayyid said, referring to an Israeli military operation in northern Gaza on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Hamas keeps fighting. Its armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it launched a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese official media said Israeli aircraft again bombed Hezbollah's south Beirut bastion on Monday, later reporting six strikes on the area, which has been repeatedy hit since late last month.

"Enemy warplanes launched successive strikes on the southern suburbs," the National News Agency said, later reporting "six strikes" on neighbourhoods in the area.

Lebanon's government said Monday that more than 400,000 people had fled an Israeli escalation against Lebanese militant group Hizbollah across the border into Syria in less than two weeks.

More than 300,000 of those who escaped from September 23 to Saturday were Syrians returning to their war-torn country, while more than 102,000 were Lebanese, a governmental crisis unit said.

Hizbollah group said on Monday it ordered its fighters not to attack Israeli troops who recently moved behind a UN peacekeeping position near a Lebanese border village.

The statement came a day after UNIFIL had warned Israel's operations near their position at Maroun Al Ras was "extremely dangerous" and compromised their safety, adding it had repeatedly informed Israel of their concerns.

Hizbollah said it reported "unusual movement of Israeli enemy forces behind a UNIFIL position, on the outskirts of the border village of Maroun Al Ras".

It ordered fighters "not to take action... to preserve the lives of the peacekeepers", quoting a field commander in its statement.

The group accused Israel of "trying to use UNIFIL forces as human shields".

Contacted by AFP, UNIFIL did not immediately respond.

On Saturday, UNIFIL said it remained in all positions near the border despite what it said was an Israeli request to "relocate".

Last week, Israel said it would start carrying out limited ground incursions into south Lebanon.

Hizbollah said it has clashed with Israeli troops in the Maroun Al Ras area and confronted attempted infiltrations there several times this week.

Israel has intensified its campaign against Lebanese militant group Hezbollah since September 23, killing more than 1,110 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of protesters marched in cities around the world over the weekend calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon as the war in the Palestinian territory neared the one-year mark.

In Washington, more than a thousand protesters demonstrated outside the White House, demanding the United States, Israel's top military supplier, stop providing weapons and aid to Israel.

One man attempted to set himself on fire, AFP journalists saw, succeeding in lighting his left arm ablaze before bystanders and police extinguished the flames.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters also gathered in cities across Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas to demand an end to the conflict, which has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza.

Candlelight vigils are set to take place on the anniversary on Monday of Hamas's attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory's health ministry and described as reliable by the United Nations.

With Israel now mounting a ground operation in Lebanon and vowing to respond to a barrage of missiles fired by Iran this week, there are fears the conflict could spiral into a wider war.

Underlining international polarisation over events in the Middle East, demonstrations in support of both Israel and the Palestinians are planned worldwide , sometimes with rival events scheduled in the same city.

'Worse and worse' 

A pro-Palestinian protest in Rome that drew thousands of people turned violent, as dozens of young demonstrators threw bottles and firecrackers at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannon.

At least one policeman was wounded and two protestors were detained, AFP journalists said.

"Israel is a criminal state!" the demonstrators shouted.

In Berlin, police said they had detained 26 people who shouted insults at a pro-Israeli commemoration attended by around 650 people.

Meanwhile, a pro-Palestinian demonstration drew just over 1,000 protestors in the German capital, police said.

At the "National March for Palestine" in London, chants of "stop bombing civilians" were joined by shouts of "hands off Lebanon".

Zackerea Bakir, 28, said he has attended dozens of marches around the United Kingdom. Large numbers continue to turn up because "everyone wants a change", he told AFP.

"It's continuing to just get worse and worse, and yet nothing seems to be changing," said Bakir, joined at the rally by his mother and brother.

While the rally in London was largely peaceful, at least 15 people were arrested, including three on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker and one on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation.

In Dublin, several hundred people took to the streets, waving Palestinian flags and chanting: "Ceasefire now!".

In France, thousands of people marched in Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Strasbourg to express solidarity with Palestinians, AFP journalists said.

Around 5,000 people joined a pro-Palestinian protest in Madrid, brandishing signs with messages such as "Boycott Israel".

A pro-Palestinian demonstration in the Swiss city of Basel drew several thousand people, the Keystone-ATS news agency reported.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators also marched on the Israeli embassy in Athens, which was heavily guarded by riot police.

 Soaring tension 

In Cape Town in South Africa, hundreds walked to parliament, chanting: "Israel is a racist state" and "We are all Palestinian."

Pro-Gaza marches were also planned Saturday in Johannesburg and Durban.

In Caracas, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested outside the United Nations's headquarters for Venezuela, carrying a giant Palestinian flag.

They delivered a petition to the UN calling for an end to the "genocide" of the Palestinians.

"Where are the UN peacekeepers? Why haven't they intervened?" university professor Jesus Reyes, 53, told AFP.

In Indonesia, more than a thousand people gathered outside the US embassy in Jakarta for a rally on Sunday morning, an AFP journalist saw.

Organisers and public figures delivered speeches from a stage, calling for an independent Palestine and for the incoming Indonesian government to refuse the normalization of relations with Israel.

In Australia, thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors thronged the streets of Sydney and other major Australian cities, holding placards that read "stop arming Israel".

Other pro-Palestinian protests were planned over the weekend and on Monday in cities including New York, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Manila, and Karachi.

Commemorations for victims of the October 7 attack are also scheduled internationally, including ceremonies in London, Washington, Paris and Geneva.

An official anniversary ceremony will be held in Jerusalem on Monday.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog will lead a memorial service at Sderot, one of the cities hardest hit during the onslaught by Palestinian militants.