Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli forces on Sunday said it had reached “another phase” of preparation for war on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has spent months exchanging fire with Iran-backed Hizbollah.

Hizbollah generally targets Israeli positions close to the border, and says it is doing so in support of Hamas fighters who have been at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip since Hamas suddenly attacked Israel on October 7.

Israel has increasingly carried out deeper strikes into Lebanese territory and has also targeted commanders from Lebanon’s Hizbollah group.

It has also stepped up strikes against Hizbollah and other Iran-linked targets in Syria, including an air strike on April 1 against Iran’s embassy consular section in Damascus, in what analysts fear could spiral into all-out war.

On Sunday the Israeli army said “another phase of the Northern Command’s readiness for war” on the Lebanon front has been completed.

In a statement on its website, the military said commanders “are prepared to summon and equip all the required soldiers in just a few hours... to the front line for defensive and offensive missions”.

The statement came after the military said its fighter jets struck a compound of Hizbollah’s elite Radwan Forces “in the area of Khiam”, several kilometres  north of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as a command centre near Toura, northeast of the coastal city of Tyre.

Israel had earlier said it hit targets in Kawkaba, near Khiam, and Meiss El Jabal in southern Lebanon in response to rockets fired towards the Golan Heights.

Emmanuel Navon, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University, told AFP it is “unlikely a war in the north can be avoided”.

But Israeli security expert Omer Dostri said a land war would not likely happen until the fighting on the ground in Gaza is over.

Hizbollah and Israel last went to war in 2006.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Friday that his movement had not yet used its “main” weapons, and reiterated that Hizbollah would cease its attacks only when the war in Gaza ends.

Also on Sunday a source close to Hizbollah told an AFP correspondent in eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek region that other strikes targeted Janta and Sifri in the Bekaa Valley, around 80 kilometres from the closest Israeli frontier.

The Israeli military said on Telegram that fighter jets struck “a military complex” and three other infrastructure sites “belonging to Hizbollah’s air defense network” in the region, after an army drone was shot down.

Iranian leaders have vowed retaliation for the embassy strike which killed seven of its Revolutionary Guards.

On Sunday Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the army had “finished all its preparations to react to any scenario that could arise regarding Iran”.

GENEVA — The World Health Organisation said on Saturday that Gaza's largest hospital had been reduced to ashes by Israel's latest siege, leaving an "empty shell" with many bodies.

WHO staff who gained access on Friday to the devastated facility described horrifying scenes of bodies only partially buried, with their limbs sticking out, and the stench of decomposing corpses.

Israeli forces pulled out of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation, during which it said it had battled Palestinian "militants" inside what was once the Palestinian territory's most important medical complex.

A WHO-led mission finally accessed the hospital on Friday, after multiple failed attempts since March 25, the United Nations health agency said.

It found massive destruction and heard reports that patients had been "held in abysmal conditions" during the siege and several had died.

"WHO and partners managed to reach Al-Shifa — once the backbone of the health system in Gaza, which is now an empty shell with human graves after the latest siege," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In a statement, WHO said no patients remained in the hospital, where "numerous shallow graves" had been dug just outside the emergency department and the administrative and surgical buildings.

"Many dead bodies were partially buried with their limbs visible," it said.

 'Decomposing bodies' 

During their visit, WHO staff witnessed "at least five bodies lying partially covered on the ground, exposed to the heat", it said.

"The team reported a pungent smell of decomposing bodies engulfing the hospital compound."

"Safeguarding dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity," the WHO stressed.

The mission, which was conducted in cooperation with other UN agencies and the acting hospital director, found that "the scale of devastation has left the facility completely non-functional".

"Most of the buildings in the hospital complex are extensively destroyed and the majority of assets damaged or reduced to ashes," Tedros said.

“Even restoring minimal functionality in the short term seems implausible.”

WHO said the acting hospital director had described how patients were “held in abysmal conditions during the siege”.

“They endured severe lack of food, water, healthcare, hygiene and sanitation, and were forced to relocate between buildings at gun point,” it said.

At least 20 patients reportedly died, it said, “due to the lack of access to care and limited movement authorised for health personnel”.

Tedros said efforts by WHO and other aid groups to revive basic services at Al Shifa after Israel’s first devastating raid on the hospital last year “are now lost”.

“People are once again deprived of access to life-saving health care services,” he continued.

Of Gaza’s 36 main hospitals, only 10 remain even partially functional, according to the WHO.

For the past six months, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the besieged, densely populated Palestinian territory, killing at least 33,137 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Tedros said urgent action was needed in Gaza as “famine looms, disease outbreaks spread and trauma injuries increase” among the trapped Palestinian population.

He called for the “protection of remaining health facilities in Gaza... unimpeded access of humanitarian aid into and across the Gaza Strip” and a “ceasefire”.

He also called for a “functional deconfliction mechanism”, referring to the process of clearing aid missions in advance with the Israeli military to ensure they can go ahead safely and unhindered.

“Despite deconfliction, yesterday’s mission faced significant delays at the military checkpoint en route to Al-Shifa hospital,” the WHO pointed out.

It said that “between mid-October and the end of March, over half of all WHO missions had been denied, delayed, impeded or postponed” by the Israelis.

“As health needs soar, the lack of a functional deconfliction system is a major obstacle in delivering humanitarian aid — including medical supplies, fuel, food and water to hospitals — anywhere close to the scale needed,” it said.

TEHRAN — Thousands of people chanted against Israel and the United States at Friday's funeral for seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, who were killed in an air strike in Syria, which Iran blamed on Israel.

Guards chief General Hossein Salami warned that Israel "cannot escape the consequences" of Monday's strike, which levelled the five-storey consular annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus.

Israel has not commented on the strike, but analysts saw it as an escalation of its campaign against Iran and its regional proxies that runs the risk of triggering a wider war beyond the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Friday's ceremony coincided with annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemorations, when Iran and its allies organise marches in support of the Palestinians.

Quds Day rallies also took place in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain while in Lebanon the head of the Iran-backed Hizbollah movement delivered a speech.

Iran has said among the dead were two brigadier generals from the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi and Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

A Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Zahedi, 63, was the Quds Force commander for the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Lebanon.

He had held several commands during a career spanning more than 40 years, and was the top Iranian soldier killed since a United States missile strike at Baghdad airport in 2020 killed General Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force.

The coffins of the seven were placed on the trailers of two trucks in one of the largest squares in Tehran.

Israel ‘will be punished’ 

Mourners held Iranian, Palestinian flags and Hizbollah flags, chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”

Ziyad Al Nakhalah, leader of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad which fights alongside Hamas in Gaza, attended the funeral, Iran’s Fars news agency reported. President Ebrahim Raisi and his predecessor Hassan Rouhani were also present.

Guards chief Salami said Tehran was determined to make Israel pay for the raid. “The Zionist regime cannot escape the consequences of the harm it does,” he said, adding: “It is exposed and knows very well what is going to happen.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Israel “will be punished” for the killings.

Israel said on Thursday it was strengthening its defences and pausing leave for combat units following Iran’s threats to retaliate.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Iran would inevitably retaliate.

“Be certain that Iran’s response to the targeting of its Damascus consulate is inevitable,” he said in a televised Quds Day speech.

Nasrallah warned that Hizbollah, which is believed to have a large arsenal of missiles and rockets, had yet to deploy its “main” weapons in its near daily cross-border exchanges with the Israeli army.

“We have not employed our main weapons yet, nor have we used our main forces,” he said.

Hizbollah said Friday that three of its fighters had been killed in exchanges with Israel. Its ally Amal said it had also lost three fighters to an air strike in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said in a communique that it had bombed a “military complex” used by Amal and targeted several regions of southern Lebanon.

A military spokesman posted on X, formerly Twitter, that Israel’s air force had struck Hezbollah infrastructure.

Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against Iran and its allies, including Hizbollah, carrying out hundreds of strikes against targets in Syria.

Guards chief Salami said Israel was entirely dependent on US backing.

“The Zionist regime is alive and well today because of artificial support from the United States. When this is withdrawn it will collapse, and this is near,” he said.

Quds Day solidarity rallies with the Palestinians were held across the region, AFP correspondents reported.

Hundreds marched in Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus, including members of Islamic Jihad, many chanting “Jerusalem we are coming”.

In Baghdad, pro-Iran groups organised a rally that drew around 2,000 people who gathered on Palestine Street chanting: “No to America, No to Israel.”

An Israeli flag was painted on the ground so that protesters could trample it.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that US policy on Israel depends on the protection of civilians in Gaza, in his strongest hint yet of possible conditions to Washington's military aid.

The warning from the White House came after Israel's killing of seven aid workers unloading food in famine-threatened Gaza on Monday sparked international outrage and calls for Israel to rein in its offensive, now nearing its seventh month.

In Britain, which counted three nationals among the aid workers, a letter signed by more than 600 lawyers piled new pressure on the government to suspend arms export licences to Israel.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) accused Israel of systematically destroying Gaza's healthcare system, describing scenes of carnage that no hospital in the world would be able to handle.

"You get crush injuries to the abdomen, to the thorax; amputations are required for the legs and arms; and on top of that, patients suffer severe burns," its deputy programme manager of the Middle East, Amber Alayyan, said.

In his first call with Netanyahu since the deaths of the employees of US-based charity World Central Kitchen, Biden described the Israeli strike as "unacceptable and called for an "immediate ceasefire".

Biden "made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers", a White House statement said.

"He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel's immediate action on these steps."

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Washington expected to see action from Israel within the "coming hours and days" but added that US support for Israel's defence remained "iron-clad".

"What we are looking to see and hope to see here in the coming hours and days is a dramatic increase in the humanitarian assistance getting in, additional crossings opened up, and a reduction in the violence against civilians and certainly aid workers," Kirby said.

Democrat Biden is facing growing pressure in an election year over his support for Israel’s Gaza war -- with allies pressing him to consider making the billions of dollars in military aid sent by the United States to its key ally each year dependent on Netanyahu listening to calls for restraint.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin too expressed “outrage” at the aid workers’ killings — which Israel has admitted to — in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant.

The bodies of the six foreign staff of WCK — Australian, British, Polish and US-Canadian citizens — were repatriated from Gaza via Egypt on Wednesday, while the Palestinian employee was laid to rest in Gaza.

‘Concern’ over Rafah plan

Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, including in the south Gaza city of Rafah, while pledging to move the more than 1 million civilians in the city out of harm’s way first.

Austin said the aid charity “tragedy reinforced the expressed concern over a potential Israeli military operation in Rafah, specifically focusing on the need to ensure the evacuation of Palestinian civilians and the flow of humanitarian aid”.

The Israeli army said Gallant and Austin had also “discussed the threat posed by Iran and its proxy activities”, after Israel was blamed for a Monday air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed in a social media message that “with God’s help we will make the Zionists repent of their crime of aggression against the Iranian consulate in Damascus”.

The Israeli military said that, after a “situational assessment, it was decided to increase manpower and draft reserve soldiers”.

The army also said “leave will be temporarily paused for all combat units”.

As Netanyahu has fought the war, he has faced intense domestic pressure from the families and supporters of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, and from a resurgent anti-government protest movement.

War Cabinet member Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival of Netanyahu, has demanded that a snap election be held in September, a call rejected by the premier’s right-wing Likud Party.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war began with Hamas’ October 7 sudden attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 33,037 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Amid the heightened tensions, Israeli security services said they had foiled a plot to kill the far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who heads the Jewish Power Party, and to strike other targets.

‘Food for our families’

In besieged Gaza, where vast areas have been reduced to rubble, 2.4 million Palestinians have struggled on under bombardment while enduring dire shortages of food, water, fuel and other basic supplies.

The charity Oxfam said that people in northern Gaza have been forced to survive on an average of 245 calories a day — less than a can of beans, and a fraction of the recommended average daily 2,100 calorie intake per person.

In Gaza City, Palestinians spent the night near an aid delivery spot, hoping to secure a bag of flour.

“We sleep on the streets, in the cold, on the sand, enduring hardship to secure food for our families, especially our young children,” one man told AFP. “I don’t know what else to do or how our lives have come to this.”

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — The bodies of six foreign aid workers killed in an Israeli strike were on Wednesday taken out of Gaza to Egypt for repatriation, a security source said, as Israel faced a chorus of outrage over their deaths.

The Israeli military killed seven staff of the US-based food charity World Central Kitchen on Monday in an attack that UN chief Antonio Guterres labelled "unconscionable" and "an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted".

The remains of the six international staff, who were killed alongside one Palestinian colleague, were taken in ambulances to the Rafah crossing to Egypt, where they were handed over to representatives of their respective countries, the security source said on condition of anonymity.

Israel's armed forces chief Herzi Halevi called the attack a "grave mistake", which he blamed on night-time "misidentification", adding in a video message that "we are sorry for the unintentional harm to the members of WCK".

The seven deaths piled more pressure on Israel, whose war since the Hamas sudden attack of October 7 has brought devastation and mass civilian casualties to Gaza, where the UN warns the population of 2.4 million is on the brink of famine.

US President Joe Biden said he was "outraged and heartbroken" by the deaths and charged that Israel "has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians".

 'Anger and concern' 

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had voiced his "anger and concern" to Netanyahu, while Britain summoned the Israeli ambassador and demanded "full accountability".

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X to Netanyahu and Israel’s ambassador, saying the deaths were straining ties and that “the tragic attack against volunteers and your reaction are generating an understandable anger”.

Pope Francis also voiced “deep sorrow” and renewed his appeal for access to aid for the “exhausted and suffering civilian population” of Gaza, and for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas.

The charity said it was mourning the loss of its seven “heroes” and “beautiful souls”.

It said they had been killed in a “targeted attack” that was launched despite the group having coordinated its movements with Israeli forces.

It named those killed as Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, 25; Australian Lalzawmi (Zomi) Frankcom, 43; Britons John Chapman, 57, James (Jim) Henderson, 33, and James Kirby, 47; Pole Damian Sobol, 35; and US-Canadian Jacob Flickinger, 33.

After their deaths, the charity suspended operations and a ship that had carried food aid from Cyprus to Gaza turned back towards the Mediterranean island with around 240 tonnes of supplies that had not been unloaded.

Mass protests 

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s October 7 sudden attack, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,975 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The army said its forces had “killed and apprehended a number of terrorists” in fighting near the Al Amal hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, where they had also located numerous weapons.

Palestinian militants also seized around 250 hostages on October 7. Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.

Talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal have stalled, with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh accusing Israel of procrastinating.

The families of the captives have staged four straight nights of mass protests, joined by a resurgent anti-government movement.

Thousands gathered in front of parliament Tuesday, with former prime minister Ehud Barak blaming Netanyahu for the October 7 “disaster” and demanding new elections.

The UN Human Rights Council will on Friday consider a draft resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel, citing the “plausible risk of genocide in Gaza”.

The draft “condemns the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects by Israel in populated areas in Gaza” and of “the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.

There are 47 countries serving on the Human Rights Council — among them 18 states which brought forward the draft resolution. Twenty-four votes are needed for an outright majority, or possibly fewer if there are abstentions.

Israel has long accused the Human Rights Council of being biased against it.