Region

PORT SUDAN — Paramilitary drones struck army-held areas of eastern and southern Sudan for a fifth straight day Thursday, army sources said, prompting an exodus of civilians from Port Sudan, seat of the army-backed government.

Attacks targeted the country's main naval base outside Port Sudan, as well as fuel depots in the southern city of Kosti, two sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The militia launched another drone attack on the Flamingo Naval Base north of Port Sudan," one source told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the regular army since April 2023.

Explosions were heard across the city, an AFP correspondent reported.

Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast had been regarded as a safe haven, hosting United Nations offices and hundreds of thousands of displaced people, until drone strikes blamed on the RSF began on Sunday.

The port city is the main entry point for humanitarian aid into Sudan, and UN chief Antonio Guterres warned the attacks "threaten to increase humanitarian needs and further complicate aid operations in the country", his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Nearly 1,100 kilometres to the southwest, in the army-controlled city of Kosti in White Nile state, RSF drones struck fuel depots, setting off massive fires, a military source said.

"The militia targeted the fuel depots that supply the state with three drones, causing fires to break out," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

More than two years of war have killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million, according to UN figures.

 'No choice but to leave' 

RSF drone strikes on Port Sudan this week hit key facilities including the country's last functioning international airport, its largest working fuel depot and the city's main power station.

An army source said air defences had shot down 15 drones over the city overnight.

At Port Sudan's bustling main bus station, civilians were scrambling to leave.

"You can't get a ticket without booking over a day in advance now, all the buses are booked," said bus company employee Mahmoud Hussein.

Among those fleeing was Haidar Ibrahim, preparing to travel south with his family.

"The smoke is everywhere and my wife suffers from asthma," he told AFP. "We have no choice but to leave."

Many of those who had sought refuge in Port Sudan have been displaced multiple times before, fleeing each time the front line closed in.

Transport costs have nearly doubled as a result of fuel shortages triggered by the attacks.

"Now, we have to buy fuel on the black market," said tuk-tuk driver Abdel-Meguid Babiker.

On Wednesday evening, drones were also seen over the army-held eastern city of Kassala and northern city of Merowe, prompting anti-aircraft fire.

Eight-country east African bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD], called the attacks on civilian infrastructure in Port Sudan "unacceptable" and demanded an "immediate end".

"Any assault on this critical hub further compounds human suffering and impedes the delivery of urgently needed assistance," IGAD executive secretary Workneh Gebeyehu said in a statement.

The RSF has not commented on the drone strikes, which have hit targets hundreds of kilometres away from their closest known positions on the outskirts of greater Khartoum.

The paramilitaries have ramped up their drone campaign since losing control of nearly all of greater Khartoum to the army in March.

On Tuesday, the army-backed government severed ties with the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of supplying the RSF with advanced weapons systems.

The UAE denied the allegation, adding that the internationally recognised administration "does not represent the legitimate government of Sudan".

The paramilitaries and their allies have moved to establish a rival administration in areas under their control.

Abu Dhabi has repeatedly denied arming the RSF, despite reports from UN experts, US politicians and international organisations.

The war has effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, east and centre, and the RSF in control of most of Darfur and parts of the south.

PARIS — Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa on Wednesday met French leader Emmanuel Macron on his first visit to Europe since overthrowing longtime ruler Bashar Al Assad, despite alarm over deadly clashes that have overshadowed the new authorities' first months in power.

Ahead of the high-profile talks at the Elysee Palace, Sharaa and his foreign minister met a whistleblower who helped document horrific torture under long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Sharaa and Assaad Al Shibani "met with Farid Al Madhan, known as 'Caesar'", the Syrian presidency said.

Madhan revealed his identity in February during an interview with broadcaster Al Jazeera. He fled Syria in 2013 with some 55,000 graphic images including photographs showing emaciated bodies and people with their eyes gouged out.

The photographs inspired a 2020 US law which imposed economic sanctions on Syria and judicial proceedings in Europe against Assad's entourage.

In Paris with Macron, Sharaa will discuss post-war reconstruction and economic cooperation, a Syrian government official said.

"This meeting is part of France's historic commitment to the Syrian people who aspire to peace and democracy," the Elysee Palace said.

By welcoming Sharaa, Macron hopes to help the authorities on the way to "a free, stable, sovereign Syria that respects all components of Syrian society", a French presidential official told AFP.

The official said France was aware of "the past" of certain Syrian leaders and was demanding that there be "no complacency" with "terrorist movements" operating in Syria.

 'Fight against impunity'

"If we are inviting him [Sharaa] here, it is precisely to ask him to go further in the fight against impunity," Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told broadcaster TF1.

Sharaa headed the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) which spearheaded Assad's downfall after 14 years of civil war.

France, a former colonial-era ruler of Syria, is eyeing an opportunity to increase its influence in the country after years of Russian presence, with French companies also seeking contracts.

Last week, French logistics giant CMA CGM signed a 30-year contract to develop and operate the port of Latakia.

Mehad, a French NGO which has operated in Syria since 2011, warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis in the country and called for "a strong response" from France.

"Emmanuel Macron's strong commitment must now be translated into action, not only by maintaining the budget allocated to humanitarian aid in Syria, but also by disbursing it quickly," said Mehad director Mego Terzian.

 'Serious error'

Syria's new Islamist authorities have vowed inclusive rule in the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country.

But sectarian clashes in March, in which more than 1,700 people were killed, mostly among Assad's Alawite minority, sparked international condemnation and doubts over Syria's new path.

More recent clashes involving fighters from the Druze community and reports of abuses from NGOs have also raised doubts about the interim government's ability to control extremists in its ranks.

Adding to pressure on the new Syrian government, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes on the country since Assad's overthrow, including one near the presidential palace in Damascus on Friday.

The invitation for Sharaa has caused controversy in France, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen accusing Macron of hosting talks with "a jihadist" in a "provocative and irresponsible" meeting.

On the traditional right, the head of the right-wing Republicans in parliament, Laurent Wauquiez, denounced the meeting as "a serious error".

"We don't welcome leaders who are former terrorists and members of organisations that want to attack France," he said.

Barrot, who met the Syrian leader in Damascus in January, defended the talks and said that Paris was engaging in a "demanding" dialogue with Damascus.

KHALLET AL-DABAA, Palestinian Territories — Standing in the rubble of what used to be his home, Palestinian farmer Haitham Dababseh cleared stones to make space for a tent after Israeli army bulldozers destroyed his village in the occupied West Bank.

Residents of Khallet Al Dabaa and other hamlets in the West Bank's Masafer Yatta region have for years contended with violence from Israeli settlers and repeated demolitions.

But the bulldozers that descended on Khallet Al Dabaa on Monday carried out "the biggest demolition we've ever had", said Dababseh, razing to the ground the hamlet that is home to about 100 Palestinians.

Israeli forces "came here in the past, they demolished three times, four times", the 34-year-old farmer told AFP, but never entirely destroyed a hamlet this size in Masafer Yatta.

"I just have my clothes. Everything I have is under the rubble."

Behind him, his 86-year-old father struggled to move the house's former door out of the way so that they can set up their shelter.

Khallet Al Dabaa is one of several villages featured at length in the Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land", recounting the struggles of the Palestinian residents of the area in the West Bank's south, a frequent target of settler violence and army activities.

Several of the communities shown in the documentary have experienced settler attacks or army demolitions since it won an Academy Award in March.

No protection

Several years after occupying the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli army had declared Masafer Yatta a restricted firing zone.

Israeli forces regularly demolish structures that the military authorities say were built illegally in the area, where about 1,100 Palestinians live across several hamlets.

"Enforcement authorities of the Civil Administration dismantled a number of illegal structures that were built in a closed military zone in the South Hebron Hills," the Israeli military told AFP in a statement on the Khallet Al Dabaa demolition.

"The enforcement actions were carried out after the completion of all required administrative procedures and in accordance with the enforcement priority framework previously presented to the Supreme Court," it added.

Some residents, and many of their ancestors, once lived in caves in the rocky terrain to escape the area's stifling summer heat, and built houses with stone and other materials after the Israeli firing zone designation in the 1970s.

Dababseh said he was the first member of his family to be born in a hospital and not a cave.

He lamented that the army had blocked the entry to the cave near the family home where his father and grandfather were born.

In the middle of Khallet Al Dabaa, what served as a health and community centre is now a pile of broken concrete with no walls.

A torn logbook that an aid organisation used to record residents' medical check-ups lay under dust.

On the outside wall of the only structure left standing, a painted mural read "Let me live".

Mohammed Rabaa, head of the nearby Tuwani village council which has jurisdiction over Khallet al-Dabaa, told AFP that the foreign aid his community received was useless if the world "can't protect it".

 'I'm not leaving'

According to Rabaa, "nine settler outposts were established in the Masafer Yatta area" since October 2023, when war began in the separate Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians, but also some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Settlement outposts, built without the authorities' prior approval, are considered illegal under Israeli law too although enforcement is relatively rare.

The settlers who live in the nearby outposts "attack homes, burn property, destroy and vandalise" with full impunity and often under army protection, said Rabaa.

To him, they aim to force Palestinians to leave and "do not want any Palestinian presence".

The day after Khallet al-Dabaa was razed, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, expressed his hope that the government would formally annex the territory soon.

Umm Ibrahim Dababseh, a 76-year-old woman who has lived in Khallet Al Dabaa for six decades, said she would not leave under any circumstances.

"I told them, 'make my grave right here'," she said of the Israeli soldiers, adding that they had to drag her out of her now ruined house.

"I didn't even get to wear my clothes properly," she said, sitting with her granddaughters on a rock under the shade of an olive tree.

Haitham Dababseh, a distant relative of Umm Ibrahim, said that hardships would not make him leave either.

"Last night, I slept there," he said, pointing to a bed exposed to the elements on the hilltop.

"I have a bed, okay, I will cover myself with the sky, but I'm not leaving."

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Hamas insisted Wednesday on a "comprehensive" agreement to end its war with Israel, as rescuers said Israeli bombardment of Gaza killed at least 26 people amid a growing humanitarian catastrophe.

A two-month ceasefire in the war collapsed in March, with Israel resuming intense strikes and imposing a total aid blockade on the Palestinian territory.

Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in Hamas's unprecedented October 2023 attack and Hamas's disarmament, which the group has rejected as a "red line".

Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war's end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid.

"Hamas and the resistance factions insist on reaching a comprehensive agreement and a full package to end the war and aggression, along with a roadmap for the day after," political bureau member Bassem Naim told AFP Wednesday.

"There are desperate attempts ahead of (US President Donald) Trump's visit to the region... to force through a partial deal that would return some Israeli captives in exchange for a limited number of days of food and water -- without any guarantees from any party to actually end the war," he said.

Trump is due in the Gulf next week for talks with the heads of state of powerful monarchies.

Israel this week drew widespread condemnation over its plans for an expanded Gaza offensive, which an official said would entail the "conquest" of the Palestinian territory.

 'We die of hunger'

Before that phase begins, a senior Israeli security source had said that the timing of troop deployments allowed a "window of opportunity" for a possible hostage deal coinciding with Trump's Middle East trip.

"We want to try and get as many hostages saved as possible," Trump said at the White House, without elaborating.

In Gaza, rescuers said strikes killed 26 people, 15 in a strike on a school.

"Our teams retrieved 15 martyrs and 10 injured individuals after Israeli occupation aircraft targeted the Al-Karama school, which shelters displaced persons... in the Tuffah neighbourhood, east of Gaza City," spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP.

He had earlier reported a toll of 11 killed in strikes on the territory.

One strike hit a house in the southern city of Khan Yunis, where eight members of the Al-Qidra family were killed and 12 wounded, Bassal said.

The ages of the dead ranged from two to 54, he added.

AFP footage from Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital showed wounded children crying on hospital beds while bodies covered in blankets arrived in ambulances.

"They were sleeping and the house collapsed on them," said Abir Shehab, adding her brother had been killed.

"We die of hunger, we die of war, we die of fear, we die of everything, and the whole world stands by and watches us die," she said.

Israel's military did not immediately comment on the strikes.

 'More deaths and injuries'

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday at least 2,545 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign, bringing the war's overall toll to 52,653.

On Tuesday, Hamas said it was pointless to continue ceasefire talks with Israel, accusing it of waging a "hunger war" on Gaza.

France's President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that the situation in Gaza was "the most critical we have ever seen".

In Madrid, Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and Slovenia in a joint statement said they "firmly reject any demographic or territorial change in Gaza".

UN rights chief Volker Turk voiced concerns Wednesday that Israel's plans to expand its offensive aim to create conditions threatening Palestinians' "continued existence" in Gaza.

"There is no reason to believe that doubling down on military strategies, which, for a year and eight months, have not led to a durable resolution, including the release of all hostages, will now succeed," he said.

"Instead, expanding the offensive on Gaza will almost certainly cause further mass displacement, more deaths and injuries of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Gaza's little remaining infrastructure."

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Mustafa, not affiliated to Hamas, urged the world to put a stop to the "deliberate humanitarian crime" of famine, which he said was being perpetrated in Gaza.

"We appeal to the conscience of humanity. Do not let the children of Gaza starve to death," he said.

PORT SUDAN, SUDAN — A drone strike targeted Sudan's biggest naval base Wednesday, an army source told AFP, marking the fourth straight day the seat of the army-backed government has come under attack.

"They [the drones] were met with anti-aircraft missiles," the source said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

An AFP correspondent reported a series of explosions and then a cloud of smoke coming from the direction of the Flamingo Base, just north of the city.

War has raged since April 2023 between Sudan's regular armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which the army-backed government has called a "proxy" of the United Arab Emirates.

Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast had been a safe haven, hosting hundreds of thousands of displaced people and United Nations offices, until Sunday when drone strikes blamed on the RSF began.

Drones struck across Port Sudan on Tuesday, hitting the main port, the city's power station and the country's last functioning international airport.

Nearly 600 kilometres  further south, "three drones attempted to strike airport facilities" in the army-held eastern city of Kassala, near the border with Eritrea, a security source said.

Witnesses told AFP they heard explosions from anti-aircraft missiles west of the city, which has also come under repeated attack this week.

Nationwide, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.

It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the centre, north and east while the RSF holds nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.

 Aid 'lifeline'

The RSF has not directly commented on this week's attacks on Port Sudan, about 650 kilometres  from its nearest known positions on the outskirts of the capital Khartoum.

The strikes have raised fears of disruption to humanitarian aid across Sudan, where famine has already been declared in some areas and nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity.

UN relief chief Tom Fletcher said he was "very concerned by ongoing drone strikes on Port Sudan, a hub for our humanitarian operations and key entry point for aid".

Nearly all aid into Sudan flows through the port city, which the United Nations has called "a lifeline for humanitarian operations".

It has warned of more "human suffering in what is already the world's largest humanitarian crisis".

The United States on Tuesday condemned the drone strikes "on critical infrastructure and other civilian targets in Port Sudan and throughout the country".

"These attacks represent a dangerous escalation in the Sudan conflict," the State Department said.

Spain too condemned the attacks, calling them a "violation of international law and a threat to peace efforts".

 'Advanced weaponry'

The long-distance drone campaign comes after the RSF lost control of nearly all of greater Khartoum in March, after holding it virtually since the start of the war.

The foreign ministry of the army-backed government described the attack on Port Sudan as "a full-fledged crime of aggression", which it said was carried out with "strategic drones and advanced weaponry".

Sudan has accused the UAE of supplying the RSF with the weapons it has used to strike Port Sudan.

The UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF, despite reports from UN experts, US politicians and international organisations.

Sudan's northern neighbour Egypt has historically been the army's strongest backer and, according to experts, still wields significant influence with army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

During the war, Burhan has drawn closer to Turkey and Iran.

Russia, which previously supported the RSF through its mercenary group Wagner, has pivoted towards the army's camp, with its sights on a Red Sea naval base near Port Sudan.

KHALLET AL-DABAA, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — Standing in the rubble of what used to be his home, Palestinian farmer Haitham Dababseh cleared stones to make space for a tent after Israeli army bulldozers destroyed his village in the occupied West Bank.

Residents of Khallet al-Dabaa and other hamlets in the West Bank's Masafer Yatta region have for years contended with violence from Israeli settlers and repeated demolitions.

But the bulldozers that descended on Khallet al-Dabaa on Monday carried out "the biggest demolition we've ever had", said Dababseh, razing to the ground the hamlet that is home to about 100 Palestinians.

Israeli forces "came here in the past, they demolished three times, four times", the 34-year-old farmer told AFP, but never entirely destroyed a hamlet this size in Masafer Yatta.

"I just have my clothes. Everything I have is under the rubble."

Behind him, his 86-year-old father struggled to move the house's former door out of the way so that they can set up their shelter.

Khallet al-Dabaa is one of several villages featured at length in the Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land", recounting the struggles of the Palestinian residents of the area in the West Bank's south, a frequent target of settler violence and army activities.

Several of the communities shown in the documentary have experienced settler attacks or army demolitions since it won an Academy Award in March.

No protection

Several years after occupying the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli army had declared Masafer Yatta a restricted firing zone.

Israeli forces regularly demolish structures that the military authorities say were built illegally in the area, where about 1,100 Palestinians live across several hamlets.

"Enforcement authorities of the Civil Administration dismantled a number of illegal structures that were built in a closed military zone in the South Hebron Hills," the Israeli military told AFP in a statement on the Khallet al-Dabaa demolition.

"The enforcement actions were carried out after the completion of all required administrative procedures and in accordance with the enforcement priority framework previously presented to the Supreme Court," it added.

Some residents, and many of their ancestors, once lived in caves in the rocky terrain to escape the area's stifling summer heat, and built houses with stone and other materials after the Israeli firing zone designation in the 1970s.

Dababseh said he was the first member of his family to be born in a hospital and not a cave.

He lamented that the army had blocked the entry to the cave near the family home where his father and grandfather were born.

In the middle of Khallet al-Dabaa, what served as a health and community centre is now a pile of broken concrete with no walls.

A torn logbook that an aid organisation used to record residents' medical check-ups lay under dust.

On the outside wall of the only structure left standing, a painted mural read "Let me live".

Mohammed Rabaa, head of the nearby Tuwani village council which has jurisdiction over Khallet al-Dabaa, told AFP that the foreign aid his community received was useless if the world "can't protect it".

 'I'm not leaving'

According to Rabaa, "nine settler outposts were established in the Masafer Yatta area" since October 2023, when war began in the separate Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians, but also some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Settlement outposts, built without the authorities' prior approval, are considered illegal under Israeli law too although enforcement is relatively rare.

The settlers who live in the nearby outposts "attack homes, burn property, destroy and vandalise" with full impunity and often under army protection, said Rabaa.

To him, they aim to force Palestinians to leave and "do not want any Palestinian presence".

The day after Khallet al-Dabaa was razed, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, expressed his hope that the government would formally annex the territory soon.

Umm Ibrahim Dababseh, a 76-year-old woman who has lived in Khallet al-Dabaa for six decades, said she would not leave under any circumstances.

"I told them, 'make my grave right here'," she said of the Israeli soldiers, adding that they had to drag her out of her now ruined house.

"I didn't even get to wear my clothes properly," she said, sitting with her granddaughters on a rock under the shade of an olive tree.

Haitham Dababseh, a distant relative of Umm Ibrahim, said that hardships would not make him leave either.

"Last night, I slept there," he said, pointing to a bed exposed to the elements on the hilltop.

"I have a bed, okay, I will cover myself with the sky, but I'm not leaving."

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on Tuesday hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing 22 people and wounding dozens more, with Israel saying it had targeted Hamas militants.

Civil defence media officer Ahmad Radwan told AFP that "the number of martyrs has risen to 22, with dozens wounded in the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced persons" in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces had struck a "Hamas command and control centre in the central Gaza Strip" which was used "to store weapons".

Hamas on Tuesday dismissed as pointless ceasefire talks with Israel, accusing it of waging a "hunger war" on Gaza, where famine looms, as the Israeli military prepared for a broader assault.

The comments from Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim followed Israel's approval of a military plan involving the long-term "conquest of the Gaza Strip", according to an Israeli official.

Nearly all of the Palestinian territory's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war, sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. A two-month Israeli blockade since early March has worsened the humanitarian crisis.

"There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip," senior Hamas official Naim told AFP.

The former Gaza health minister said the world must pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to end the "crimes of hunger, thirst, and killings".

Qatar, a key mediator in the conflict, said that "our efforts remain ongoing" despite major obstacle to a ceasefire.

Israel's military has said the expanded operations approved by the security cabinet on Sunday would include displacing "most" of Gaza's population.

Before that phase begins, a senior Israeli security source has said that the timing of troop deployments allowed a "window of opportunity" for a possible hostage deal coinciding with US President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East next week.

Israel's military resumed its offensive on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month truce that saw a surge in aid into the war-ravaged territory and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Gaza's civil defence agency said on Tuesday that six Palestinians including a young girl were killed in Israeli dawn attacks.

 'Dust and destruction'

Moaz Hamdan, who lost family members in a strike in Nuseirat in central Gaza, said he was awoken by "a very large explosion".

The whole area was "covered in dust and destruction", he said. "We were unable to rescue the wounded."

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 2,507 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in mid-March, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,615.

Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the Gaza Strip should be "entirely destroyed" and its inhabitants "leave in great numbers to third countries" after the war.

His comments came a day after United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq said that "Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state."

For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the "Nakba", or catastrophe -- the mass displacement in the war that led to Israel's creation in 1948.

'No aid'

The UN and aid organisations have repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, exacerbated by the total blockade since early March, heightening fears of famine.

The United Nations' humanitarian agency OCHA accused Israel of trying to "weaponise" the flow of aid into Gaza.

"There's no aid to distribute anymore because the aid operation has been strangled," OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said.

Israeli military spokesman Effie Defrin said the planned offensive approved by the cabinet would include "moving most of the population of the Gaza Strip... to protect them".

Hundreds of Israelis demonstrated Monday outside parliament in Jerusalem to express their opposition to the government plan.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, urged leaders to "go the extra mile, make an extra effort, take the extra step, so that we can see our hostages home immediately."

China said it opposed Israel's military actions in Gaza and was "highly concerned" by the situation, urging all parties to "effectively implement the ceasefire agreement".

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Paris "very strongly" condemns Israel's planned offensive, calling it "unacceptable", and adding that its government was "in violation of humanitarian law".