Region

UNITED NATIONS, United States — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Thursday on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to halt bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, singling out the United States.

Abbas said that Washington continued to provide diplomatic cover and weapons to Israel for its war in Gaza despite the mounting death toll there, now at 41,534 according to the health ministry in the strip.

"Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel. This madness cannot continue. The entire world is responsible for what is happening to our people in Gaza and the West Bank," Abbas said in an address to the UN General Assembly.

The vast majority of the besieged Gaza Strip's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking shelter in school buildings.

"The US alone stood and said: 'No, the fighting is going to continue.' It did this by using the veto," he said, referring to the veto repeatedly wielded to thwart censure in the UN Security Council of Israel's campaign in Gaza.

"It furnished Israel with the deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women. 

"This further encouraged Israel to continuous aggression," he added, saying that Israel "does not deserve" to be in the UN.

Washington is Israel's closest ally and backer, supplying the nation with billions of dollars of aid and military materiel.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon said Thursday that more than 1,500 people had been killed in almost a year of cross-border violence between Hezbollah and the Israeli army that has spiralled dramatically this week.

According to figures in a statement released by the country's disaster management unit, 1,540 people have been killed, 60 of them in the past 24 hours, and 5,410 wounded in the ongoing hostilities. 

The US and French leaders pressed jointly Wednesday for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, in a call joined by allies as the death toll mounts from Israeli strikes on Hizbollah.

Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York as they voiced fears that the conflict, after a year of bloodshed in Gaza, would escalate into a full-blown regional war.

The situation in Lebanon has become "intolerable" and "is in nobody's interest, neither of the people of Israel nor of the people of Lebanon," said a joint statement released by the White House.

"We call for an immediate 21 day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement."

The statement was issued jointly with Western powers, Japan and key Gulf Arab powers -- Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot earlier unveiled the proposal at an emergency Security Council session.

"There has been important progress in the past few hours," Barrot said.

"We've been working since the start of the week in New York on a diplomatic solution with our American friends in particular."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and warned, "Hell is breaking loose." 

Israel said it welcomed diplomacy on Lebanon but did not commit to a ceasefire, vowing to pursue its goal of degrading Hizbollah. 

"We are grateful for all those who are making a sincere effort with diplomacy to avoid escalation, to avoid a full war," Israel's envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told reporters before entering the session.

But he added: "We will use all means at our disposal, in accordance with international law, to achieve our aims."

The violence comes after the failure to reach a ceasefire in Gaza where Israel for nearly a year has been seeking to wipe out another Iranian ally, Hamas, which carried out the deadliest attack ever on Israel.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that Tehran, which in recent weeks has held back on retaliatory strikes on Israel after attacks targeting Iranian interests, may no longer be restrained.

"The region is on the brink of a full-scale catastrophe. If unchecked, the world will face catastrophic consequences," he told reporters.

Hizbollah holds powerful influence within long-turbulent Lebanon. The country's foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, asked by reporters if a ceasefire was possible, said: "Hopefully yes."

 'Acute' risk of escalation 

Israel went ahead with the offensive in Lebanon despite repeated appeals by the United States to avoid a wider war. 

"Risk of escalation in the region is acute," said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made 10 trips to the Middle East since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. 

Israel and Hezbollah had been skirmishing since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, but at a lower level. 

Last week pagers and other handheld communications devices of Hizbollah exploded in an operation widely attributed to Israel.

Hundreds have died and thousands have been displaced since Israel launched its strikes, with the Lebanese health ministry saying that another 72 people died on Wednesday.

Diplomats said that the United States was no longer directly linking its struggling push for a Gaza ceasefire with Lebanon efforts due to the urgency of the crisis.

"An all-out war is possible," Biden said on ABC's chat show "The View."

"What I think is, also, the opportunity is still in play to have a settlement that could fundamentally change the whole region," Biden said.

Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council he was concerned by deaths in Lebanon.

But he also pinned blame on Hizbollah, accusing it of violating Security Council resolutions through its alliance with Hamas since October 7.

"Nobody wants to see a repeat of the full-blown war that occurred in 2006," Wood said.

But he said that any end to the conflict needed to include a "comprehensive understanding" that preserves calm along the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon said 15 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, including two rare strikes in mountain areas outside Hizbollah's traditional strongholds in the south and east.

The health ministry said an Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed four people. 

Another Israeli strike killed three people in Maaysra -- a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 25 kilometres north of Beirut.

Eight people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south, the ministry said.

Earlier, a Lebanese security official had told AFP "an Israeli strike targeted a house in the village of Maaysra", requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

A resident said the strike hit her village, destroying a house and a cafe.

Lebanon's National News Agency reported that "two rockets fell in Maaysra".

The Israeli military said it was carrying out "extensive" air strikes in south Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa Valley after Hizbollah fired a ballistic missile that reached the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time before being intercepted.

Longtime foes Hizbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire since Palestinian group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.

The focus of Israel's firepower has shifted sharply from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday warned Israel would not stop its military operations against Hizbollah until northern residents can safely return to their homes.

"We are striking Hizbollah with blows it never imagined. We are doing this with full force, we are doing this with guile. One thing I promise you: we will not rest until they return home", Netanyahu said in a statement.

Earlier in the evening, Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi told soldiers to be prepared for possible entry into Lebanon.

"We are not stopping. We will keep attacking and harming (Hezbollah) everywhere," Halevi said.

"To do this, we are preparing for the course of the manoeuvre, and the sense is that your military boots, your manoeuvre boots, will enter enemy territory.

"These are the things that will allow us to safely repatriate the residents of the north later," the army chief added.

BEIRUT, NEW YORK — Lebanon said more than 350 people including 24 children had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country's east and south Monday, the deadliest day in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

"Israeli enemy strikes on towns and villages in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa and Baalbek" in the east, "killed 356 people, including 24 children and 42 women, and injured 1,246" others, the health ministry said in a statement. 

War began when Hamas carried out the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Hizbollah and other Iran-backed groups around the region drawn into the violence.

Israel said it had hit more than 300 Hizbollah sites with dozens of strikes on Monday, while Hizbollah said it had targeted five sites in Israel.

The toll was "274 dead, including 21 children and 39 women", said Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad, adding that about 5,000 people had been wounded in Israeli attacks since Tuesday.

World powers have implored Israel and Hizbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply in recent days from Israel's southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.

"We sleep and wake up to bombardment... that's what our life has become," said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the southern Lebanese village of Zawtar.

More to come

Israeli military spokesman rear admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hizbollah as strikes would "go on for the near future".

He told civilians to "immediately move out of harm's way for their own safety".

Abiad said "thousands of families from the targeted areas have been displaced".

Bilal Kachmar, an official in Tyre, said hundreds had fled their homes, while AFP correspondents saw rows of cars leaving the nearby city of Sidon.

The Israeli military also warned people living in the Bekaa valley, in eastern Lebanon, to flee their homes, as it announced it was "broadening" the scope of its strikes.

Explosions around the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon triggered flashes of fire and sent smoke billowing into the sky.

Hizbollah said it had fired rockets at military sites near Haifa.

It later said it launched "dozens of rockets" at two Israeli bases "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks on the south and the Bekaa".

The education minister said schools in targeted areas would close for two days.

The official National News Agency said Lebanese had received phone messages from Israel telling them to "quickly evacuate".

Hizbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, has exchanged near-daily fire with Israel in support for its Palestinian ally Hamas.

Israel changing 'security balance'

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel was preempting threats and was acting to change the "security balance" in the north.

Hizbollah's deputy chief, Naim Qassem, said on Sunday the group was in a "new phase, namely an open reckoning" with Israel, and ready for "all military possibilities".

They spoke after Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel caused damage in the area of Haifa, a major city on Israel's north coast.

On Sunday morning, hundreds of thousands of people in northern Israel fled to their bomb shelters as Hizbollah fired a barrage of rockets across the border.

The attack came after an Israeli air strike in Hizbollah's southern Beirut stronghold on Friday killed its elite Radwan Force commander, Ibrahim Aqil, along with other commanders and civilians.

Last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, coordinated communications device blasts that Hizbollah blamed on Israel killed 39 people and wounded almost 3,000.

Since the cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hizbollah began in October, tens of thousands of people on both sides have fled their homes.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the United Nation and world powers to deter what he called Israel's "plan that aims to destroy Lebanese villages and towns".

Another Gaza?

US President Joe Biden, whose country is Israel's main ally and weapons supplier, said his administration was "going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out".

Ahead of the annual General Assembly in New York, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned of Lebanon becoming "another Gaza" and said it was "clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire" there.

Speaking at the General Assembly, Masoud Pezeshkian, the recently elected president of Iran, which backs Hizbollah and Hamas, accused Israel of seeking "to create this wider conflict".

The UNIFIL peacekeeping force in south Lebanon meanwhile warned that "any further escalation of this dangerous situation could have far-reaching and devastating consequences".

Israel's offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday accused Israel of seeking a wider conflict, insisting that Tehran has been deliberately holding back in the hope of securing regional peace.

"We know more than anyone else that if a larger war were to erupt in the Middle East, it will not benefit anyone throughout the world. It is Israel that seeks to create this wider conflict," Pezeshkian told a roundtable with journalists as he attended the UN General Assembly in New York.

Pezeshkian, inaugurated in July as a reformist within the cleric-run state, was making his UN debut as Israel strikes Lebanon following a wave of attacks on handheld communications devices targeting Hizbollah.

Tensions soared immediately after his inauguration as the visiting political chief of Hamas, the Palestinian fighters who attacked Israel on October 7 last year, was assassinated in an operation in Tehran widely attributed to Israel.

Pezeshkian alluded to appeals from the West for Iran not to retaliate so as not to jeopardise US efforts for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

"We tried to not respond. They kept telling us we are within reach of peace, perhaps in a week or so," he said.

"But we never reached that elusive peace. Every day Israel is committing more atrocities and killing more and more people, old, young, men, women, children, hospitals, other facilities," he said.

He did not reply directly when asked if Iran would now respond more directly to Israel.

"We always keep hearing, well, Hizbollah fired a rocket. If Hizbollah didn't even do that minimum, who would defend them?" he said.

"Curiously enough, we keep being labelled as the perpetrator of insecurity. But look at the situation for where it is."

UNITED NATIONS, UNITED STATES — The UN's refugee chief questioned on Sunday what future awaited the Sudanese people as the country's civil war rages, pushing its people ever further afield including to Uganda and Europe's maritime borders.

Since the start of the war in April 2023, "well over 10 million people have been chased away from their homes," two million of whom fled Sudan, Filippo Grandi told AFP in an interview, ahead of the annual UN General Assembly high-level week.

"What's the future for a country like Sudan, devastated by war?" Grandi asked.

Grandi's role leading the UNHCR and its 20,000 staff is one of the most important in the United Nations due to the ever-growing number of refugees in the world, and the agency has won the Nobel Peace Prize twice.

Grandi said it was "worrying" that "people are starting to move away from the immediate neighbourhood," describing a sharp increase of Sudanese, around 40,000 -- arriving in non-bordering Uganda.

"We have seen at least 100,000 Sudanese arrive in Libya," Grandi said.

"We know that, given the active presence of trafficking networks and also the proximity with Europe, many of them may now try, or are already trying, to take boats on to Italy and other European countries," Grandi said.

Crisis 'unobserved' by international community 

"We have been warning the Europeans," he added, insisting that humanitarian aid for Sudan was inadequate, and that Sudanese people would continue to leave and would reach more countries.

"This crisis is really beginning to impact the whole region in very, very risky ways."

Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic are home to tens of thousands of refugees, while Egypt, where many Sudanese migrants were already living, is home to millions.

Sudan's civil war has pitted the army led by general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the paramilitary RSF forces of general Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, claiming tens of thousands of lives and plunging 26 million into severe food insecurity.

Famine has been declared in Zamzam camp in Darfur near to the city of El-Fasher, where the RSF this weekend launched a large-scale offensive after months of siege.

"We have very patchy information about the situation inside," Grandi said.

"(But) we know that there are certain patterns”, namely that militias, sometimes linked with one of the warring parties or the RSF itself "targets or puts pressure on civilians."

The RSF, with the support of Arab militias, have killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in the West-Darfur town of El-Geneina alone, UN experts said.

"This most grave crisis, a crisis of human rights, a crisis of humanitarian needs, passes largely unobserved in our international community," Grandi said.

"Every new crisis chases the other crisis away”, from Ukraine to Gaza.

But even before the deadly war in Gaza, the war in Sudan had been "marginalized" despite its massive impact, he said, condemning the "deficit of interest for crises in Africa," like those in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahel, as "frightening and shocking."

Grandi questioned the outlook for Sudan even if peace was achieved, warning that the Sudanese middle class which had "held the country together had been completely destroyed.

"They know that it's over. They've lost their jobs, their homes have been destroyed," he said. 

"Many times relatives have been killed. It's atrocious."

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Global news channel Al Jazeera said armed and masked Israeli forces raided its office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday and issued a 45-day closure order.

It was the latest salvo in a long-running feud between the Arab broadcaster and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government which has worsened during the war in Gaza.

The Israeli military has repeatedly accused journalists from the Qatari-based network of links to Hamas or its ally Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel's accusations and said Israel systematically targets its employees in the Gaza Strip.

Four of Al Jazeera's journalists have been killed since the war in Gaza began, and the network's office in Gaza was bombed.

The broadcaster said the soldiers did not provide a reason for the closure order on Sunday.

“There is a court ruling for closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid Al Omari in a conversation broadcast live on the network.

“I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment,” the soldier said, according to the footage.

Omari said the order accused the network of “incitement to and support of terrorism”, according to Al Jazeera.

“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” Omari said.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian foreign ministry condemned Sunday’s operation as “a flagrant violation” of press freedom.

Shuttering the Al Jazeera office “confirms the [Israeli] occupation’s efforts to disrupt the work of the media in conveying the occupation’s violations against the Palestinian people”, said Mohammed Abu Al Rub, director of the government media office for the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.

‘No surprise’

The Foreign Press Association in Israel and the Palestinian Territories said it was “deeply troubled by this escalation” and called on Israel to “reconsider” the move.

“Restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels signals a shift away from democratic values,” the association’s board said in a statement.

In April, the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing the banning of foreign media broadcasts deemed harmful to state security.

Based on this law, the Israeli government approved on May 5 the decision to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel and close its offices for an initial 45-day period, which was extended for a fourth time by a Tel Aviv court last week.

The network condemned that decision as “criminal”, saying it “violates the human right to access information”.

Israel’s government last week announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country.

The shutdown had not affected broadcasts from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera was still covering Israel’s war with Palestinian militants.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim said the network’s West Bank office closure “comes as no surprise” after the earlier ban on reporting from inside Israel.

“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau,” she said on the network.

The media office of the Hamas-run government in Gaza condemned Sunday’s raid, saying in a statement it was a “resounding scandal and a blatant violation of press freedom”.

Qatar, which partly funds Al Jazeera, also served as a base for Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. He was killed in July during a strike in Tehran, which Iran and Hamas blamed on Israel.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,431 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.

GAZA — Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a school-turned-shelter in the Palestinian territory's largest city killed 21 people, while Israel's military said it targeted Hamas fighters.

"Civil Defence crews recovered 21 people, including 13 children and six women," one of whom was pregnant, said agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

There were "around 30 injured, including nine children [needing] limb amputations, as a result of an Israeli bombing on Al Zaytoun School C" in Gaza City, he said.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory also said 21 people were killed.

Thousands of displaced people had sought shelter at the school, Bassal said.

Israel said in a statement the air force had "conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City".

It said the target was “embedded inside” the Al Falah School, adja-cent to the Al Zaytoun School buildings. An AFP reporter at the scene confirmed that Al Zaytoun School C had been hit.

Witnesses said that before the strike, or-phans had gathered there because they were due to receive sponsorship from a lo-cal NGO for humani-tarian assistance.

Israel’s military did not provide a death toll but said “numer-ous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, in-cluding the use of pre-cise munitions, aerial surveillance and addi-tional intelligence”.

It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced peo-ple in Gaza.

A strike on the Unit-ed Nations-run Al Jawni School in cen-tral Gaza on Septem-ber 11 drew interna-tional outcry after the UN agency for Pales-tinian refugees said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hid-ing in school buildings where many thousands of Gazans have sought shelter — a charge de-nied by the Palestinian militant group.

Hamas on Saturday condemned the strike on Al Zaytoun School C, describing it in a state-ment as “a war crime under American cover”, a reference to Wash-ington being Israel’s most important mili-tary backer.

“There has also been an increase in attacks on residential neigh-bourhoods and tents of displaced people,” the Hamas statement said.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the ongoing war, which was trig-gered by Hamas’ Octo-ber 7 attack on Israel.

‘Health ministry staffers killed’

The war has badly bat-tered Gaza’s health sector, and the World Health Organisation said earlier this month that only 17 of its 36 hospitals were partial-ly functional.

Gaza’s health min-istry said on Saturday that in a separate in-cident, an Israeli air strike hit a warehouse in a “densely popu-lated” area of south-ern Gaza, killing “three ministry of health per-sonnel and a passer-by” and injuring six others.

“The warehouse was directly targeted with several missiles while doctors and staff were performing their du-ties, preparing to transport the medi-cines stored there to hospitals under the ministry of health that are facing severe short-ages of medicines and supplies,” a statement said.

Israel’s military had no immediate com-ment on the warehouse strike. Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, ac-cording to an AFP tally based on official Is-raeli figures, which in-cludes hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.

At least 41,391 Pal-estinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry there. The United Na-tions has acknowl-edged these figures as reliable.