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BEIRUT — Journalists in southern Lebanon said they were targeted Monday in Israeli strikes, which Al Jazeera network said lightly wounded its photographer.

A local mayor and Lebanese state media corroborated the journalists' account of the cross-border incident, which came exactly a month after deadly strikes blamed on Israel hit a press group near Alma Al Shaab in southern Lebanon.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.

Around a dozen journalists from several media outlets were on a tour to inspect damage from Israeli bombardments and had been providing coverage from the border town of Yarun when the strikes hit.

Al Jazeera said its photographer Issam Mawasi was "lightly wounded as a result of Israeli bombing".

"Al Jazeera's broadcast vehicle was also damaged during the attack. The strike occurred as a group of journalists toured the area," a report on the Qatari broadcaster's website said.

Al Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief Mazen Ibrahim accused Israel of “directly targeting” the group, adding that the journalists were in an open area.

“Israeli occupation forces don’t hesitate to directly target journalists,” he charged.

On October 13, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed and six other journalists from AFP, Al Jazeera and Reuters were wounded while covering the cross-border fighting in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of being behind the strikes. The Israeli army had said it was looking into the circumstance of the fatal strike.

Yarun Mayor Ali Qassem Tahfah said two successive Israeli strikes on Monday “targeted the group of journalists”, hitting several metres from the teams’ vehicles and causing damage.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency also said two Israeli strikes “targeted a media team” who were working in Yarun.

Local broadcaster Al Jadeed posted video on X, formerly Twitter, showing one of its correspondents, in a protective vest and helmet marked press, conducting a live broadcast when one strike hit, and a subsequent blaze nearby.

Other video footage showed civilian vehicles including at least one marked “press” on the road adjacent to the blaze.

Dozens killed 

“We were on a tour to inspect damaged houses,” Journalist Amal Khalil from local newspaper Al Akhbar told AFP.

“Around 15 minutes after we were near a damaged house, the first strike hit the wall of the bombed house, and a second one hit the road,” she said.

Israeli surveillance drones had been flying over the town at the time of the attack, she added.

Since Hamas’ surprise October 7 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon’s southern border has seen intensifying tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israel and Hizbollah, an ally of the Palestinian group, stoking fears of a broader conflagration.

At least 87 people have been killed in Lebanon since hostilities began: More than 60 Hizbollah fighters, 12 other combatants including from Palestinian groups and 11 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Cross-border violence since October 7 has killed nine people in northern Israel including six soldiers, according to official figures.

Another seven Hizbollah fighters have been killed in Syria in strikes attributed to Israel.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday that at least 40 journalists and media workers have been killed during Israel’s war on Gaza, 35 Palestinian, four Israeli and one Lebanese.

GAZA STRIP, Palestine — The hospitals in the centre of the heaviest north Gaza fighting have been forced out of service amid shortages and Israeli air strikes, the health ministry said Monday, adding the number of patients dying in the biggest medical centre had risen.

As witnesses reported more "violent fighting", overnight aerial bombardments and the clatter of gunfire echoed across the sprawling Al Shifa hospital at the heart of the Gaza City, now an urban war zone.

The Gaza government's deputy health minister Youssef Abu Rish told AFP all hospitals in the north of the embattled territory were "out of service".

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Palestinian Territories warned that up to 3,000 patients and staff are sheltering inside without adequate fuel, water or food, after the UN's humanitarian agency said previously that 20 of Gaza's 36 hospitals have been disabled.

“Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after contacting on-the-ground staff inside the Al Shifa complex.

“It’s been three days without electricity, without water,” he said, describing the plight of those trapped inside as “dire and perilous”.

Israel is facing intense international pressure to minimise civilian suffering amid its massive air and ground operation, which that Palestinian health ministry in Gaza authorities say have killed 11,180 people, including 4,609 children.

International concern 

International attention has focused on the plight of Palestinians, and protests have been held worldwide in solidarity with the 2.4 million under bombardment and siege for more than five weeks.

Only a few hundred trucks carrying humanitarian aid had been let into Gaza since October 7.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Monday its operations in war-torn Gaza would shut down within two days due to fuel shortages as fighting rages between Israel and Hamas.

“The humanitarian operation in Gaza will grind to a halt in the next 48 hours as no fuel is allowed to enter Gaza,” UNRWA’s Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Almost 1.6 million people, about two-thirds of Gaza’s population, have been internally displaced since October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

Across Gaza City at the Al Quds hospital the picture was also said to be dire, with the Palestinian Red Crescent warning it was now out of service due to a lack of generator fuel.

Tens of thousands of Gazans have already fled from the north of the territory under Israeli orders.

But it is unclear what, if any, provisions there would be for the sick and injured to be transported from Al Shifa.

Israel’s military said it would observe a “self-evacuation corridor” on Monday, allowing people to move from Al Shifa southward, but admitted the area was still the scene of “intense battles”.

The Israeli forces also said its ground soldiers had hand-delivered 300 litres of fuel near the hospital “for urgent medical purposes”.

Al Shifa Director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told journalists the Israeli claims were “lies” and said that, at any rate, 300 litres would power generators for “no more than quarter of an hour”.

Meanwhile, the EU’s humanitarian aid chief called on Monday for “meaningful” pauses in the fighting in Gaza and urgent deliveries of fuel to keep hospitals working in the territory.

“It is urgent to define and respect humanitarian pauses,” Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for crisis management, told a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels.

“Fuel needs to get in. As you could see, more than half of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip stopped working, primarily because of lack of fuel, and fuel is desperately needed.”

The EU’s 27 countries issued a statement Sunday saying hospitals “must be protected” and condemning Hamas for using the medical facilities and civilians as “human shields”.

The bloc demanded “immediate humanitarian pauses” to allow desperately needed aid into the besieged territory.

“These pauses have to be meaningful,” Lenarcic said.

“First of all, they have to be announced well in advance of the implementation so organisations can prepare to exploit them. Second, they have to be clearly defined time-wise.”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted that “Gaza needs more aid from any point of view”.

“Water, fuel, food. This aid is available, is in the border waiting to come in,” he said.

Borrell announced that he would travel to “Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan this week to discuss humanitarian access and assistance and political issues with regional leaders”.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said that hospitals in Gaza should not be turned into “battlefields”.

“Patients who are in intensive care units have no chance,” he said.

“There is no more oxygen, there is no more water, there are no more medicines. So these people are going to die.”

ISMAILIA, Egypt (AFP) — A Turkish vessel carrying materials for field hospitals arrived Monday in Egypt's port of El Arish near the Rafah border crossing with the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, a port official said.

It is the first such aid vessel to arrive in Egypt since war broke out on October 7. A Turkish health official told AFP that the vessel was carrying "materials, generators, ambulances to establish eight field hospitals".

The Turkish official added that Ankara had requested Cairo's approval to build the field hospitals in El Arish, which lies about 40 kilometres  from the Rafah border, the only crossing to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

"We received the green light from Egyptian authorities. We will set up these hospitals to the areas shown by the Egyptian authorities," the official said.

The delivery comes as Hamas government officials said all hospitals in northern Gaza were “out of service” amid fuel shortages as a result of fighting with Israeli forces.

The Hamas government’s Deputy Health Minister Youssef Abu Rish said the death toll inside Al Shifa rose to 27 adult intensive care patients and seven babies since the weekend as the facility suffered fuel shortages.

OCCUPIIED JERUSALEM — The United Nations said several people have been killed and wounded in strikes on a UN facility in Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians have taken refuge to escape the war.

"The shelling has reportedly resulted in a significant number of deaths and injuries," the United Nations Development Programme said in a statement issued late Saturday.

"The ongoing tragedy of death and injury to civilians ensnared in this conflict is unacceptable and must stop."

In a separate incident, AFPTV footage showed a crater in the middle of a compound of a school run by the UN agency for supporting Palestinians (UNRWA) in Beit Lahia in north Gaza.

Thousands of people displaced by the war had taken refuge in the school.

Israel has been bombing targets across the Gaza Strip since Hamas fighters carried out a surprise attack on southern Israeli border on October 7.

The ministry has not given updated casualty figures for 48 hours, saying it has been unable to establish contact with hospitals.

It said dozens of bodies are scattered on the streets while ambulances have been unable to reach the casualties due to intense fighting and bombings.

UNRWA announced on Friday that more than 100 of its employees had died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday called for pressure on the United States to stop Israel's offensive in Gaza, but said there would be no agreement unless Washington accepted the enclave as Palestinian land.

Erdogan returned from a summit on Saturday of Arab and Muslim leaders in the Saudi capital Riyadh, which condemned Israeli forces' "barbaric actions" in Gaza without approving concrete punitive measures.

He is due to visit Germany on Friday and plans to travel to Egypt and host Iran's president in the coming weeks.

"We should hold talks with Egypt and the Gulf countries, and pressure the United States," Erdogan told Turkish reporters on board his return flight from Riyadh.

"The US should increase its pressure on Israel. The West should increase pressure on Israel... It's vital for us to secure a ceasefire," he said.

Erdogan, who was on a trip to a northeastern Turkish village when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Ankara on November 5, did not rule out a meeting with President Joe Biden.

"The most important country that needs to be involved is the United States, which has influence on Israel," Erdogan said.

But he said he would not call Biden.

Blinken "has just been here [in Turkey]. I guess Biden will host us from now on. It would not be suitable for me to call Biden," he said.

Erdogan said the US must accept Gaza as Palestinian land.

"We cannot agree with Biden if he approaches [the conflict] by seeing Gaza as the land of occupying settlers or Israel, rather than the land of the Palestinian people," he said.

In another speech in Istanbul on Sunday, Erdogan vented fury at Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in comments broadcast live on Turkish television.

"Hey Netanyahu, these are your good days, more different days are awaiting you... Netanyahu you should know that you're leaving," Erdogan said, after previously labelling the Israeli leader "no longer someone we can talk to".

Erdogan will meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz next week.

Turkey is technically a candidate for eventual EU membership and, even if this seems a distant prospect, Erdogan’s portrayal of Hamas fighters as “liberators”, which differs sharply from the bloc’s, has caused unease.

It also stands in stark contrast to the position taken by Berlin, the EU’s most populous member.

“The European Union thinks exactly the same as Israel regarding Hamas,” Erdogan said on the plane.

“I see Hamas as a political party that won the elections in Palestine. I don’t look at it the same way they do,” he added.

Erdogan repeated his call for an international conference to resolve the conflict.

“Nothing can serve peace more than a meeting of all regional actors including warring sides,” he said.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli fighter jets pounded Hizbollah hideouts in southern Lebanon with air strikes on Sunday, after an incoming anti-tank missile wounded Israeli civilians near the border, the army said.

The Israeli forces said "a number of civilians were wounded" in the anti-tank missile strike near the village of Dovev, just 800km from the frontier with Lebanon.

In response, "fighter jets struck a number of Hizbollah targets", the army said.

Iran-backed group Hizbollah claimed responsibility and said it had fired on an Israeli team installing "eavesdropping and spying devices" near the border.

Since October 7 Israel has also traded fire with militant groups in southern Lebanon on a near-daily basis.

In addition to Hizbollah, Hamas’s Lebanese branch has launched attacks into southern Israel in recent weeks.

Overnight, a drone also hit another group in Lebanon that the army said was attempting to launch an anti-tank missile towards Israel.

Israel has evacuated tens of thousands of residents from communities in the north since the October 7.

Israeli leaders have warned Hizbollah against launching a full-scale attack on Israel, saying it could suffer a similar fate to besieged Gaza if it enters the war.

Israel and Hizbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine — Gaza hospitals reported being under constant fire and running on nearly exhausted supplies Saturday as Israel rejected key allies' condemnation of a rising civilian death toll in the Hamas-controlled territory.

The director of the besieged Palestinian territory's largest hospital, Al Shifa, said on Saturday the compound was struck repeatedly overnight and lost power for hours after its generator was hit.

"We received calls about dozens of dead and hundreds wounded in air and artillery strikes, but our ambulances weren't able to go out because of gunfire," said hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya.

Gaza health ministry said dozens of premature babies at Al Shifa compound were at risk of dying because the lack of generator fuel meant their incubators could be shut down on Saturday as fighting raged.

They added one of the babies had died, and one person was killed and several others wounded in a strike on Al Shifa early Saturday.

The suffering in Gaza has prompted growing calls for a halt in five weeks of fighting in order to protect civilian lives and allow humanitarian aid into the densely populated territory.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Israel had the right to defend itself but urged it to stop strikes on civilians in Gaza: “These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed.”

The ministry says Israeli fighting has killed more than 11,000 people, also mostly civilians and thousands of them children.

‘Far too many’ deaths 

Concern over the civilian toll has also come from staunch Israel ally Washington, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying Friday: “Far too many Palestinians have been killed.”

The conflict has stoked regional tensions, with deadly cross-border exchanges between the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hizbollah movement.

Hospitals have become key sites for Palestinians seeking refuge from the intense gun battles and bombardment.

A wounded boy at the Indonesian hospital, Youssef Al Najjar, said he was waiting for surgery but the necessary machines were off due to lack of power.

“I’m very thirsty but I’m not allowed to drink or eat until the operation is done,” he added.

Twenty of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are “no longer functioning”, the UN’s humanitarian agency said.

Tens of thousands flee 

Fighting has reduced some streets in Gaza to ruins, with the sounds of apparent explosions and gunfire caught Saturday on AFPTV’s Gaza City camera.

The bodies of about 50 people killed in a strike on Gaza City’s Al Buraq school were taken to the Al Shifa hospital, its director said on Friday.

The exodus toward Gaza’s south, which has accelerated under intense fighting and through evacuation corridors, has seen tens of thousands of people flee in recent days.

An estimated 30,000 additional Palestinians went southwards through a corridor opened by the Israeli military on Friday, according to the UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA.

The Israeli military said that around 150,000 Palestinians have left in a “mass evacuation” south in recent days from the area of the northern Gaza Strip where combat is heavy.

However, strikes were hitting buildings at the southern end of Gaza in Rafah, the area of the densely-populated territory to which civilians have been urged to evacuate.

“They struck us with a missile, and they are innocent people,” said Harb Fojou, standing near the rubble of a destroyed building.

Almost 1.6 million people have been internally displaced since October 7, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, about two thirds of Gaza’s population.