Tag: War and unrest

The European Union on Monday condemned attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and rejected Israeli allegations that the U.N. was keeping them there to obstruct military operations against Hezbollah.

Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions since Israel began a ground campaign against the Hezbollah militant group, with most blamed on Israeli forces. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said “their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.”

Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah after a year of exchanges of fire, while it is also at war with Hamas in Gaza.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.

It’s been more than a year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed into army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. They are still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Here’s the latest:

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “repeatedly asked” the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to temporarily leave the area where the Israeli military is operating.

The peacekeepers belong to the 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, who have been patrolling the border area between Lebanon and Israel for nearly 50 years.

At least five members of UNIFIL have been injured since Israel started its ground incursion into Lebanon two weeks ago, leading to criticism of Israeli operations.

“Hezbollah uses UNIFIL facilities and positions as cover while it attacks Israeli cities and communities,” Netanyahu said Monday.

He says Israel “regrets any harm done to UNIFIL personnel,” but insisted the peacekeeping force should temporarily evacuate the area.

The UNIFIL chief has said U.N. peacekeepers will stay on Lebanon’s southern border despite Israel’s request.

KARBALA, Iraq — Hundreds of members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups have attended the funeral of a prominent general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who died in an Israeli airstrike that also killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.

The body of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan was flown by private plane from Beirut to Baghdad, then transported to the city of Karbala where the funeral took place Monday. Karbala is 70 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Baghdad.

The mourners wore military uniforms and carried the flags of the Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba militias, and the Popular Mobilization Forces — a collection of mostly Shiite armed groups that have semi-official status in the Iraqi military — and pictures of Nasrallah.

They chanted, “Death to Israel and America.”

The representative of the religious authority in Karbala, Sheikh Abdul Mahdi Al-Karbala, attended the funeral prayers at the shrine of Imam Hussein. A second funeral will be held in the city of Najaf, then the body will be transferred to Iran for burial.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations’ chief is in frequent contact with the commander of the U.N.’s peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon and says the mission is doing its best to protect its forces.

The mission, known as UNIFIL, has come under attack several times since Israel began a ground campaign against the Hezbollah militant group. Five peacekeepers have been wounded. Israel has said the U.N. is keeping its forces along Lebanon’s border with Israel to obstruct its military operations.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “is extremely appreciative of the courage and dedication of the more than 10,000 uniformed peacekeepers and civilian staff serving in the mission.”

The Security Council established UNIFIL in 1978 and its mandate was strengthened after the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon in 2006.

“UNIFIL continuously assesses and reviews all factors to determine its own posture and its own presence,” Dujarric said. “The mission is taking all possible measures to ensure the protection of its peacekeepers.”

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rebuked the United Nations, describing its failure to protect peacekeepers in Lebanon as “shameful” and “worrying.”

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, has come under direct attack in the past week, with Israeli troops firing at the peacekeepers’ headquarters and positions.

“Israeli tanks enter UNIFIL territory, attack peacekeepers, even injure some of them. But the United Nations Security Council is just watching these bandits from the tribunes. This is weakness. This is surrendering to Israeli aggression,” Erdogan said in a televised address Monday.

“The image of a United Nations that cannot even protect its own personnel is shameful and worrying for the international system,” he said. “We ask ourselves what else the Security Council is waiting for to stop Israel.”

The Turkish president has consistently called for reform of the U.N., especially of the Security Council, saying it is unfair that global decisions are made by its five permanent members.

ROME — A patrol of the Italian contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon found explosive devices positioned along the road leading to a U.N. base.

The Italian Defense Ministry says a team of bomb disposal experts secured the area close to Forward Operating Base UNP 1-32A, but they couldn’t complete the clearance operation because one of the devices ignited, causing a fire. No one was injured.

The ministry says UNIFIL — the U.N. peacekeepers — and Lebanese authorities are “investigating the dynamics of the events and tracing the perpetrators of the potential threat.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says its forces operating in southern Lebanon uncovered an underground compound stretching 800 meters (half a mile) that served as a command center for Hezbollah’s special forces.

A video released by the army Monday shows weapons and ammunitions that it says are stored inside the tunnel, including helicopter-fired missiles and mortar shells. It also shows motorcycles and living quarters containing beds and a kitchen stocked with food and supplies.

The army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, says the tunnel is a few kilometers from Israel’s border, and that the weapons stocked there were to be used in a raid on northern Israel.

Israeli leaders and its military have for years accused Hezbollah of hiding weapons and fighters inside homes and other civilian structures in border villages.

The army has mobilized thousands of troops for what it says is an ongoing ground operation to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure along the border.

At least 1,700 Lebanese, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million displaced in the past month. Around 60 Israelis have been killed in Hezbollah strikes in the past year. Israel says it wants to drive the militant group away from shared borders so some 60,000 displaced Israelis can return to their homes.

JERUSALEM — Israel says it has allowed 30 trucks of aid to reach northern Gaza, breaking a 2-week stretch during which the U.N. says aid levels fell precipitously in the area.

The Israeli body managing aid crossings into the territory, COGAT, said Monday that 30 trucks carrying flour and food from the U.N.’s main food agency traveled through the northern crossing after inspection. The U.N. has not confirmed the statement.

For the last two weeks, nearly no food, water, fuel or supplies have reached the north, the U.N. says, with both major crossings closed since Oct. 1.

The cutoff, combined with a renewed Israeli offensive in the area, has raised fears that Israel is pursuing an extreme plan proposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would besiege the northern third of the strip in an effort to prompt a Hamas surrender.

COGAT says 30 trucks were transferred into Gaza on Sunday through a crossing known as “Gate 96,” north of the strip, though it was unclear where the aid went because, the UN says, trucks traveling through that crossing do not go directly to the north.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Rocket fire from Lebanon set off sirens in Tel Aviv and over 180 communities across central Israel on Monday.

The Israeli military says three projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon and all were intercepted. Israel’s police say debris from an interception fell in a city south of Tel Aviv but there were no reports of injuries or significant damage.

Rocket attacks on northern Israel meanwhile continued unabated, with the army saying that approximately 90 projectiles were identified by the afternoon. Most were intercepted or fell in open areas.

A 50-year-old woman was lightly injured and heavy damage was caused in a volley of 15 rockets on the northern town of Karmiel, the military and the Israeli rescue service said.

Hezbollah has fired more than 12,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since the start of the hostilities one year ago, according to the army. Most of the fire has been directed at the north of the country, but attacks have reached deeper into Israel and become more frequent since the conflict escalated in mid September.

On Sunday, a Hezbollah drone attack on a military base in the city of Binyamina killed four soldiers and wounded 61.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it has sent out 1.7 million text messages, 3.4 million voice messages and made 3,700 voice calls notifying civilians in Lebanon to evacuate as it continues with its ground invasion there.

Some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the past month, according to the Lebanese government. At least 1.2 million people have been displaced — the vast majority since Israel ramped up airstrikes across the country last month.

Israel says it is making an effort to communicate with civilians ahead of airstrikes, but people interviewed by the the Associated Press say that they don’t receive the warnings — or that they come in the middle of the night or don’t adequately cover the area that is struck.

An Israeli intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said Monday that there are 60 Arabic speakers working to call village leaders — from doctors and governors to teachers — to urge their communities to evacuate.

The official said that the military makes the calls to village leaders hours before airstrikes occur, and that the military notifies residents in Beirut before their buildings are struck.

Lebanese say the orders often come at very short notice, and it’s not clear where people can go or when they will be able to return home. Most of the villages along the border with Lebanon have suffered extreme damage and emptied out since the start of Israel’s ground invasion. Beirut’s southern suburbs, too, have seen an exodus.

One quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military displacement orders, according to the U.N.’s human rights division.

— By Julia Frankel

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Commenting on the incident, the Israeli army official said its troops exchanged fire with armed militants during a “counterterrorism” operation Wednesday in the Jenin area, killing one of the gunmen.

According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, one of the slain men was 17 years old. Four others were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, it said.

Violence has flared in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted 12 months ago.

According to Palestinian Health Ministry data, over 750 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the territory since the war began. The northern West Bank, including Jenin and Tulkarem, has seen some of the worst violence.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant briefed his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin on the deadly Hezbollah drone attack on a military base in Israel late Sunday and vowed “a forceful response.”

The attack near the city of Binyamina killed four soldiers and wounded 61. It was the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.

In his talk with Austin, Gallant “highlighted the severity of the attack and the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah,” his office said.

He also “reiterated the measures” taken by the military to coordinate with UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and to avoid harming them, after mounting criticism of Israel for repeatedly firing on U.N. soldiers.

Gallant’s office said he expressed his appreciation to Austin and the U.S. administration for deciding to send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel “in the coming days.”

BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross says an Israeli airstrike in northern Lebanon has killed at least 18 people.

The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito on Monday, and was one of the northernmost strikes since Israel invaded Lebanon earlier this month.

The Hezbollah militant group is mainly present in the south of the country and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

BEIRUT — Lebanese officials say an Israeli airstrike hit near an aid convoy in Lebanon, wounding a driver and lightly damaging the trucks.

The humanitarian aid, which reached Beirut on Monday, was marked with the flags of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Red Cross insignia.

Baalbek-Hermel Gov. Bachir Khodr, who accompanied the convoy, said the airstrike hit as it was passing through northeastern Lebanon. He shared a picture on the social platform X taken from inside a vehicle showing a large cloud of smoke on the road ahead.

It was not clear how badly the driver was wounded.

The Red Cross did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BERLIN — The German government has sharply criticizes the shelling of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and is calling on Israel to clarify what exactly happened.

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told reporters in Berlin on Monday that “all parties to the conflict, including the Israeli army, are obliged to direct their combat operations exclusively against military targets of the other party to the conflict.” Spokesman Sebastian Fischer said that a comprehensive investigation is expected and that talks on the matter were being held with the Israeli side.

The situation in southern Lebanon is causing growing concern, Fischer added, saying that “the shelling of U.N. peacekeepers and the intrusion into their bases is in no way acceptable,” and that the protection and security of U.N. troops had top priority.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran has stopped indirect talks with the United States in Oman as tensions remain high over a possible Israeli retaliatory strike on Tehran over an earlier missile attack, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister said Monday.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the comment to Iranian state media while still in Muscat, Oman. The sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula long has been an interlocutor between Iran and the U.S., particularly in the secret talks that birthed Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

“For the time being, the Muscat process is stopped because of special situation in the region,” Araghchi said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. “We do not see any ground for the talks until we can pass the current crisis.”

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran under new President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signaling it wants to negotiate with the U.S. for sanctions relief. Since then-President Donald Trump pulled America out of the nuclear accord, Tehran has begun enriching uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels and increasing the size of its stockpile. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and officials insist Iran has not begun an effort to build a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Israel has threatened a major retaliatory strike over Iran’s ballistic missile attack earlier this month, the second-such direct assault on Israel by Iran since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

BRUSSELS — Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin is accusing Israel of trying to prevent the world from seeing what its troops are doing in Lebanon and Gaza, and of working to undermine the United Nations.

Asked what Israel’s aim might be in demanding that UNIFIL peacekeepers leave their bases after a series of attacks, Martin said: “essentially to drive the eyes and ears out of south Lebanon and to give itself free rein.”

“We cannot have an undermining and a chipping away of the status or the credibility or structures of the United Nations and particularly its peacekeeping forces,” Martin said in Luxembourg, where EU foreign ministers are meeting.

“We see what’s happening in northern Gaza, for example, in terms of the necessity of eyes and ears on the ground. The world has really no full picture of what’s happening in Gaza,” he told reporters.

Martin added that “Israel is essentially now undermining (not only) the United Nations and the United Nations peacekeeping force, but the very rules based international order, and it needs to step back.”

He called on his EU counterparts “to stand up now on the side of what’s right and proper and moral in terms of humanity.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency said Monday police had charged two Israelis on accusations that they planned to carry out an assassination at the behest of Iran.

The agency said Vladislav Victorson, 30, was approached online by a person called Mari Hossi and was instructed to carry out missions that ranged from petty vandalism to torching cars, and paid more than $5,000.

The Shin Bet said Victorson was asked to damage communications infrastructure and ATMs, although a statement did not say whether he carried out these acts. It also did not name the Israeli figure he allegedly agreed to assassinate. The Shin Bet said he also sought to acquire weapons, including a sniper’s rifle, guns and grenades. According to the Shin Bet, Victorson enlisted two other people, including his girlfriend, Anna Bernstein, 18, to assist in his missions.

The Shin Bet said Iranian agents are known to use social media and promises of cash in efforts to recruit Israelis to carry out such attacks.

Israel and Iran have a longstanding shadow war, which over the past year has erupted into direct conflict.

BRUSSELS — The European Union condemned attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon and rejected allegations that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is responsible for obstructing the Israeli army.

Sixteen EU countries are contributing to the UNIFIL peacekeeping force. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable attacking United Nations troops.” Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions, with most blamed on Israeli forces.

Speaking in Luxembourg before chairing talks between EU foreign ministers, Borrell underlined that the U.N. Security Council decides whether UNIFIL should be moved, “so stop blaming Secretary Guterres.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for UNIFIL to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hezbollah. In a video addressed to Guterres, who has been banned from entering Israel, Netanyahu told the U.N. chief “to get (UNIFIL) out of the danger zone.”

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, whose country is one of Europe’s strongest backers of Israel, said the attacks are “simply unacceptable” and that UNFIL will not be leaving.

“No, they will not withdraw. Yes, they will continue to fulfill the mandate. And yes, we demand on each and every party to respect this mandate and respect the security and safety of our blue helmets,” he told reporters.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said it has launched the second round of a polio vaccination campaign in the war-ravaged territory.

It said Monday that a second does of the vaccine will be administered to children under 10 in the central part of the territory over the next three days before the campaign is expanded to the north and south.

The campaign began last month after the territory registered its first polio case in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in one leg.

Health workers succeeded in administering the first dose of the vaccine to around 560,000 children despite myriad challenges, including ongoing fighting, the breakdown of law and order and widespread damage to roads and infrastructure.

The World Health Organization said humanitarian pauses to facilitate the campaign last month were largely observed.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — “It is totally, utterly unacceptable for Israel to be targeting U.N. Peacekeepers,” New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters in the capital on Monday.

“I think the whole world is outraged that Israel is targeting U.N. facilities. They are there on a peacekeeping mission to try and keep the peace on that border,” he said.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three on Friday, Lebanon’s military said, just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, injuring two of them for the second day in a row.

The incidents entangling both Lebanon’s official army — which has largely stayed on the sidelines of the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah — and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon raised alarm as Israel broadens its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across the country and a ground invasion at the border.

In central Beirut, rescue workers combed Friday through the rubble of a collapsed building, searching for survivors of an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens in the Lebanese capital the night before.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel over the past year in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 250 taken hostage.

In return, Israel’s military has pounded Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, killing more than 2,237 Lebanese — including Hezbollah fighters, civilians and medical personnel — according to the Lebanese health ministry.

Among them, the ministry reported late Friday, were a two-year-old and 16-year-old killed by airstrikes in the southern village of Baysarieh.

Hezbollah attacks have killed 29 civilians as well as 39 Israeli soldiers, both in northern Israel since October 2023, and in southern Lebanon since Sept. 30, when Israel launched its ground invasion.

On Friday, the Lebanese army said an Israeli airstrike hit a building near a military checkpoint in the southern Bint Jbeil province.

The Israeli military said it had been targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon when reports emerged that it had hit several Lebanese army soldiers. The Israeli army said it investigated the incident but remained “unaware of any Lebanese army facilities found in the area of the strike.”

Lebanon’s army is not a party to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — after Israel launched its ground invasion on Sept. 30, Lebanese soldiers withdrew some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from their observation posts along the border.

The only direct clash between the two national armies occurred on Oct. 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army post also in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier and prompting Lebanese soldiers to return fire.

Both Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in southern Lebanon to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended a bloody monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

But Lebanon’s army is no match for Hezbollah, and neither its soldiers nor the peacekeepers have been capable of preventing the Shiite militants from entrenching themselves in the border region. Israel accuses Hezbollah of establishing militant infrastructure along the border in violation of the U.N. resolution.

The Israeli military opened fire near the U.N. headquarters in Lebanon’s southern town of Naqoura on Friday, the army said, hitting the observation post and injuring two peacekeepers for the second time in as many days.

An initial review by the Israeli army found that soldiers in southern Lebanon targeted what they believed to be a threat located some 50 meters (yards) from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon but ultimately struck the peacekeepers.

One of the injured peacekeepers was hospitalized in the nearby city of Tyre while the other received medical care on site, the United Nations force, known as UNIFIL, said. Both were identified as Sri Lankan.

The army repeated its warning that UNIFIL personnel abandon their positions in areas where Hezbollah militants launch rockets into Israel. Following Thursday’s attack, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said 300 peacekeepers in front-line positions on southern Lebanon’s border were temporarily moved to larger bases.

In a statement condemning the strike as “a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” UNIFIL reported that explosions on Friday hit the same place they did the day before, when Israeli tank fire injured two Indonesian peacekeepers, damaged vehicles and a communication system, and drew sharp international criticism.

“Peacekeepers must be protected by all parties of the conflict, and what has happened is obviously condemnable,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The French foreign ministry accused Israel of deliberately firing at peacekeepers and summoned the Israeli ambassador Friday in an official protest.

In a call with his Israeli counterpart, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed the importance of ensuring the safety of UNIFIL forces and urged Israel to “pivot from military operations to a diplomatic pathway as soon as feasible,” the Pentagon said.

When President Joe Biden was questioned by reporters whether he was asking Israel to stop striking U.N. peacekeepers, he replied, “Absolutely, positively.”

UNIFIL, which has more than 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. The U.N. expanded its mission following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, allowing peacekeepers to patrol a buffer zone set up along the border.

From the Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood of central Beirut, civil defense workers dug through concrete and twisted metal from a three-story building brought down by an Israeli airstrike the day before — the deadliest Israeli air raid to hit Beirut over the last year of war.

Thursday’s airstrikes hit two residential buildings in neighborhoods that have swelled with displaced people fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere in Lebanon.

“The world suddenly turned upside down,” recalled Ahmad al-Khatib, a 42-year-old Lebanese postal worker who was with his wife and toddler daughter in his in-laws’ apartment when the bombs fell on the building next-door.

Al-Khatib said he had pulled his 2 ½-year-old, Ayla, out from under the debris of a collapsed bedroom wall. The force of the explosion had flung his wife, Marwa Hamdan, against a wall and a piece of metal hit her in the head. She remains in intensive care, he said, tears running down his cheeks.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel and Israeli media reported that the strikes aimed to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group, but he was not in either targeted building at the time of the strike. The Israeli military had no comment on the reports.

Another resident, Mohammed Tarhani, said he had moved in with his brother in Burj Abi Haidar after fleeing southern Lebanon to escape airstrikes in the past weeks.

“Where is one supposed to go now?” he asked.

Hezbollah kept up its rocket fire into Israel Friday, setting off air raid sirens just north of Tel Aviv. Interceptions by Israel’s air defense system scattered rocket fragments in the seaside suburb of Herzliya and sent shrapnel flying into a building there, causing damage but no casualties.

While disrupting life for Israelis, most of Hezbollah’s barrages have not caused casualties. But early Friday, an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon killed a man from Thailand working on a farm in northern Israel.

Hezbollah’s chief spokesperson vowed the group would expand its attacks into more populated areas deeper inside Israel.

“This is only the beginning,” Mohammed Afif told reporters from a smoldering street left in ruins by recent Israeli airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “I tell the enemy that you have only seen the minimum.”

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

MASNAA BORDER CROSSING, Lebanon — Powerful new explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday as Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon, also striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in the north for the first time as it targeted both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters.

Thousands of people in Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees, continued to flee the widening conflict in the region, while rallies were held around the world marking the approaching anniversary of the start of the war in Gaza.

The strong explosions began near midnight and continued into Sunday after Israel’s military urged residents to evacuate areas in Dahiyeh, the predominantly Shiite collection of suburbs on Beirut’s southern edge. AP video showed the blasts illuminating the densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. They followed a day of sporadic strikes and the nearly continuous buzz of reconnaissance drones.

Israel’s military confirmed it was striking targets near Beirut and said about 30 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory, with some intercepted.

The strikes reportedly targeted a building near a road leading to Lebanon’s only international airport, and another building formerly used by the Hezbollah-run broadcaster Al-Manar. Social media reports claimed that one of the strikes hit an oxygen tank storage facility, but this was later denied by the owner of the company Khaled Kaddouha.

Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah claimed in a statement that it successfully targeted a group of Israeli soldiers near the Manara settlement in northern Israel “with a large rocket salvo, hitting them accurately.”

On Saturday, Israel’s attack on the northern Beddawi camp killed an official with Hamas’ military wing along with his wife and two young daughters, the Palestinian militant group said. Hamas later said another military wing member was killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The aftermath showed smashed buildings, scattered bricks and stairways to nowhere.

Israel has killed several Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began , in addition to most of the top leadership of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah as fighting has sharply escalated.

At least 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes in less than two weeks. Israel says it aims to drive the militant group away from shared borders so displaced Israelis can return to their homes.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the strongest armed force in Lebanon, began firing rockets into Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, calling it a show of support for the Palestinians. Hezbollah and Israel’s military have traded fire almost daily.

Last week, Israel launched what it called a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon after a series of attacks killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others. The fighting is the worst since Israel and Hezbollah fought a brief war in 2006. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground clashes that Israel says have killed 440 Hezbollah fighters.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters in Damascus that “we are trying to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and in Lebanon.” The minister said the unnamed countries putting forward initiatives include regional states and some outside the Middle East.

Araghchi spoke a day after the supreme leader of Iran praised its recent missile strikes on Israel and said it was ready to do it again if necessary.

On Saturday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Israel has the duty and the right to defend itself and respond to these attacks, and it will do so.” On Lebanon, he said ”we are not done yet.”

Israel’s military earlier Saturday said about 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Most were intercepted, but several fell in the northern Arab town of Deir al-Asad, where police said three people were lightly injured.

At least six people in Lebanon were killed in more than a dozen Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday, according to the Lebanese state-run National News Agency.

Nearly 375,000 people have fled from Lebanon into Syria in less than two weeks, according to a Lebanese government committee.

Associated Press journalists saw hundreds continuing to cross the Masnaa Border Crossing on foot, crunching over the rubble after Israeli airstrikes left huge craters in the road leading to it on Thursday. Much of Hezbollah’s weaponry is believed to come from Iran through Syria.

“We were on the road for two days,” said Issa Hilal, one of many Syrian refugees in Lebanon who are now heading back. “The roads were very crowded … it was very difficult. We almost died getting here.” Some children whimpered or cried.

Other displaced families now shelter alongside Beirut’s famous seaside Corniche, their wind-flapped tents just steps from luxury homes. “We don’t care if we die, but we don’t want to die at the hands of Netanyahu,” said Om Ali Mcheik.

The Israeli military said special forces were carrying out ground raids against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. It said troops dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.

Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the Health Ministry there, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. Almost 90% of Gaza’s residents are displaced, amid widespread destruction.

Palestinian medical officials said Israeli strikes in northern and central Gaza on Saturday killed at least nine people. One in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed at least five, including two children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Another hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least four, Awda hospital said.

Israel’s military did not have any immediate comment but has long accused Hamas of operating from within civilian areas.

An Israeli airstrike killed two children in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood, according to the civil defense first responders’ group that operates under the Hamas-run government.

Israel’s military warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza that was at the heart of obstacles to a cease-fire deal. The military told people in parts of the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps to evacuate to Muwasi, a coastal area it has designated a humanitarian zone.

It’s unclear how many Palestinians are in those areas. Israeli forces have often returned to areas in Gaza to target Hamas fighters as they regroup.

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Mroue reported from Beirut and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

An Israeli airstrike has cut off a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria, leaving two huge craters on either side of the road.

The airstrike Friday rendered the road unusable for cars, leaving people to go on foot to the Masnaa Border Crossing where tens of thousands of people fleeing war in Lebanon have crossed into Syria in the past two weeks.

Israel this week began a ground incursion into Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group while also conducting strikes in Gaza. The Israeli military said nine soldiers have died in the conflict in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, most of them since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

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Here is the latest:

BEIRUT – A hospital in southern Lebanon said in a statement that it had been shelled by Israeli forces Friday after being warned to evacuate.

The statement from Salah Ghandour Hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil said the shelling “resulted in nine members of the medical and nursing staff being injured, most of them seriously,” while most of the medical staff were evacuated.

A day earlier, the World Health Organization says 28 health workers in Lebanon had been killed in the past 24 hours.

Earlier on Friday, the Israel military in a statement alleged that rescue vehicles were being used by Hezbollah to transport militants and weapons.

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. agency reports that three schools where it has been sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza have been attacked in the past two days, killing more than 20 people.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday that the agency helping Palestinian refugees in Gaza, UNRWA, stresses that “schools are not a target and cannot be used for any military purposes by anyone.”

Dujarric says the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, and its humanitarian partners reported this week that at least 87% of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged since Israel launched its offensive following Hamas’ attacks in southern Israel last Oct. 7.

He says one third of the buildings were UNRWA schools.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Dutch military transport plane carrying 185 people out of Lebanon has landed at an airbase in the southern city of Eindhoven, the government announced.

More than 100 of those on board the Airbus A330 plane were Dutch citizens and the remainder were repatriated at the request of Belgium, Finland and Ireland.

“It’s great that these people are safely back in the Netherlands. These have been tense times for them,” Christiaan Rebergen, secretary-general of the foreign ministry, said after they landed Friday.

A second Dutch military flight is scheduled for Saturday.

President Joe Biden says he doesn’t know whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding up a peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have,” Biden said Friday. “None. None, none. And I think Bibi should remember that. And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I’m not counting on that.”

Biden was responding to comments made by one of his allies, Sen. Chris Murphy, who said this week that he was concerned Netanyahu had little interest in a peace deal in part because of U.S. politics.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon has released an additional $2 million from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund to help address the deteriorating situation. That’s according to Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

This comes in addition to $10 million already released from the Lebanon fund, and an additional $10 million from the U.N.’s main Central Emergency Response Fund.

Dujarric says a flight carrying medical supplies from the U.N.’s World Health Organization to treat tens of thousands of injured people arrived in Beirut on Friday. Additional flights are expected later Friday and in the coming days.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military says it hit several Houthi targets in Yemen, going after weapons systems, bases and other equipment belonging to the Iranian-backed rebels.

A U.S. official has told The Associated Press that U.S. aircraft and ships struck Houthi strongholds on Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet publicly released.

The exact number of targets was not yet available as the mission was just ending.

According to the Houthi media, seven strikes hit the airport in Hodeida, a major port city, and the Katheib area, which has a Houthi-controlled military base. Four more strikes hit the Seiyana area in Sanaa, the capital, and two strikes hit the Dhamar province.

— By Lolita C. Baldor

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says two soldiers have been killed by a drone strike in northern Israel.

It says at least two other soldiers were “severely injured” by the drone strike Friday, and that the drone entered the country from the east. It did not elaborate.

Later Friday, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced it had launched drone strikes on “three targets in three separate operations in the Golan and Tiberias,” a city in Israel. The group regularly claims drone strikes targeting Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.

The military has said that nine soldiers have also been killed in Israel’s ground incursion into southern Lebanon, which began this week.

BERLIN — Germany is flying another 219 of its nationals out of Lebanon on its third military flight this week.

The foreign and defense ministries said Friday’s flight is being carried out by an Airbus A330 belonging to the Multinational Multirole Tanker Transport Unit, an international air transport fleet.

It brings to 460 the number of German citizens evacuated from Lebanon on German military flights. Two previous flights left Beirut on Monday and Wednesday.

The Foreign Ministry posted on the social platform X that the plane also delivered “several” tons of aid for civilians in Lebanon.

BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on first responders in south Lebanon has killed five paramedics and two hospitals are ceasing operations due to the intensity of attacks.

The head of the Marjayoun government hospital, Mounes Kalakesh, told The Associated Press that five paramedics were killed and seven were wounded in the drone strike Friday near the hospital.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reports that the staff of the hospital in Marjayoun were evacuated leaving the medical center out of service. A state-run hospital in the border village of Mais al-Jabal has also said it is ceasing activities, after staff were evacuated and because of a lack of fuel, medicine and electricity.

TOKYO — A Japanese Self Defense Force transport aircraft has evacuated 16 people from Lebanon, according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.

The ministry says two other Japanese citizens left Lebanon on a ship to Cyprus chartered by the Japanese government.

It says the flight carried 11 Japanese nationals, a non-Japanese relative of one of them, and four French nationals to Jordan. It has provided no further details.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Dutch military transport plane landed in Beirut early Friday afternoon to pick up citizens of the Netherlands fleeing Lebanon amid fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.

Scores of people are expected to board the A330 plane in what the Dutch foreign ministry called a repatriation flight.

The defense ministry says that if there were spare seats on the plane, it could also take citizens of other countries out of Beirut.

Meanwhile Japan’s foreign ministry announced that 11 Japanese and 4 French nationals were evacuated from Lebanon and arrived in Jordan Friday.

Israel launched a ground incursion into Lebanon on Tuesday and its forces have been clashing with Hezbollah militants in a narrow strip along the border. Israeli jets also have been carrying out airstrikes in Lebanon, including one Friday that cut off a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria.

KHAN YOUNIS, the Gaza Strip— Almost a year of war in Gaza has left thousands of children either orphaned or separated from their parents, leaving their grandparents with the task of raising them on their own.

Amir Ashour, 12, and his sister Fatima Ashour, 10, lost their parents and their 5-year-old brother Gheith when their house in Rafah was struck by the Israeli military in December 2023.

They are now being taken care of by their Atta Ashour, their grandfather from their mother’s side.

Sitting inside a tent, Fatima told The Associated Press she misses her parents and brother.

“My mother would comb my hair, dress me, and give me everything, and when I came back from school, she would help with schoolwork,” she said.

The war also left four orphans in the care of their 52-year-old grandmother Najah al-Eish, who is concerned that she will not live for long to take care of them.

“No matter how much I care for them and raise them, I might not always stay with them,” she said.

UNICEF estimates that 19,000 children are either unaccompanied, separated from family, or orphaned. The U.N. agency doesn’t have the exact number of orphans across the enclave.

BEIRUT – Iran’s foreign minister warned Israel on Friday that if it carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran will retaliate in a harsh way.

Abbas Araghchi was in Beirut for meetings with Lebanese officials. His visit came three days after Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel, the latest in a series of rapidly escalating attacks that threaten to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.

“If the Israeli entity takes any step or measure against us, our retaliation will be stronger than the previous one,” Araghchi said after meeting Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Friday its fighter jets struck an underground tunnel between Lebanon and Syria and areas around a key border crossing used by many in recent days fleeing Israel’s offensive.

Thursday’s strikes around the Masnaa Border Crossing effectively cut off the main highway linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported. Tens of thousands of people fleeing fighting in Lebanon have used crossing into Syria over the past two weeks.

The military said that its fighter jets had struck the 3.5 kilometer-long (2.17 miles) underground tunnel between Lebanon and Syria because Hezbollah has used it to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into the country. It said it struck the sites around the Masnaa border crossing because they were being used as militant infrastructure.

There are half a dozen border crossings between the two countries, most of which are still open.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weapons from Iran via Syria.

GENEVA — The U.N. refugee agency says Israeli airstrikes overnight near the main border crossing where people have been fleeing from Lebanon into Syria has “put a halt on traffic” and closed the route to vehicles.

UNHCR spokeswoman Rula Amin said the border crossing between Masnaa, Lebanon, and Jdaidit Yabws in Syria has been the main thoroughfare between the two countries, even though three other border crossings remain open.

Amin, a spokeswoman for UNHCR’s Middle East and North Africa operations, also noted government figures that up to 1 million people have fled to places across Lebanon, and more than 185,000 have gone to Syria.

Speaking from Amman, Jordan, to reporters in Geneva on Friday, Amin said most of the nearly 900 government-established collective shelters in Lebanon were full, forcing many people to sleep in the open air — including along Beirut’s famed seaside Corniche.

She said 60% of people who have crossed from Lebanon to Syria were children or adolescents, some of whom arrived alone.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Friday that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications division.

The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000” and was “closely affiliated” with high-up Hezbollah officials.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department says some 350 American citizens, green card holders and family members have now left Lebanon on US-organized contract flights this week.

The department announced the new number — up by about 100 since Thursday — after another flight from Beirut landed early Friday in Frankfurt, Germany. The flight had the capacity to carry 300 passengers but only 97 people were aboard, it said.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Thursday that the U.S. would continue to organize such flights as long as the security situation in Lebanon is dire and as long as there is demand.

More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the U.S. embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated. Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual U.S.-Lebanese nationals and long-time residents of the country, may choose to stay.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the country’s recent missile strike on Israel, state TV reported Friday.

Khamenei was leading Friday prayers and was to deliver a rare public sermon in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that was being watched for signs of what Iran might plan next.

In a 40-minute speech, he praised Tuesday’s missile barrage against Israel as a shining job by Iranian armed forces. “It will be done in the future again if it becomes necessary,” he said.

There was a commemoration ceremony for the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah beforehand. Most high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and the Revolutionary Guard’s top generals, attended the ceremony.

Iran is Hezbollah’s main backer and has sent weapons and billions of dollars to the group over the years.

Also on Friday, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Beirut, where he was expected to discuss the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah with Lebanese officials. Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Iran sent its first shipment of aid to Lebanon, including 10 tons of food and medicine.

TOKYO — As Japan prepared to evacuate its citizens from Lebanon, the government also urged those in Iran to leave as soon as possible, while commercial flights are still operating.

Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters Friday that Japan’s embassy in Iran renewed its safety advisory to Japanese nationals this week after Iran fired missiles into Israel.

On Thursday, the Japanese Defense Ministry dispatched two C-2 transport aircraft to Jordan to stand by for an evacuation of about 50 Japanese nationals from Lebanon. Iwaya said the government has not decided whether to also dispatch defense aircraft to Iran, where about 440 Japanese citizens are based, but “we will do our utmost so that we can respond to any contingency in order to protect the safety of Japanese citizens.”

BEIRUT — Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Beirut where he will discuss with Lebanese officials the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran is the main backer of Hezbollah and has sent weapons and billions of dollars to the group over the years.

The Iranian official arrived in Lebanon as Israel launched new airstrikes on different parts of Lebanon, including Beirut’s southern suburb, south Lebanon, and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Araghchi’s visit to Beirut came after Iran launched at least 180 missiles Tuesday into Israel, part of a series of rapidly escalating attacks that threaten to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency says an Israeli airstrike has cut a main highway linking Lebanon with Syria.

The agency gave no further details about Friday’s airstrike that led to the closure of a road near the Masnaa Border Crossing, from where tens of thousands of people fleeing war in Lebanon have crossed into Syria over the past two weeks. It’s the first time this major border crossing has been cut off since the beginning of the war.

Lebanese General Security recorded more than 250,000 Syrian citizens and over 80,000 Lebanese citizens crossing into Syrian territory during the last week of September, after Israel launched a heavy bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon.

Dama Post, a pro-government Syrian media outlet, said Israeli warplanes fired two missiles and damaged the road between Masnaa Border Crossing in Lebanon and the Syrian crossing point of Jdeidet Yabous.

There are half a dozen border crossings between the two countries and most of them remain open. Lebanon’s minister of public works said all border crossings between Lebanon and Syria work under the supervision of the state.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weapons from Iran via Syria. The Lebanese group has a presence on both sides of the border where it fights alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

SYDNEY — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday condemned the Iranian ambassador’s comments praising a recently slain Hezbollah leader, but rejected opposition advice to expel the envoy.

Ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi described Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli missile strike in September in Lebanon, as a “remarkable leader” on social media.

“The government condemns any support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. We condemn the ambassador’s comments,” Albanese told reporters in Sydney.

“Australia has maintained a relationship with Iran since 1968 that has been continuous. Not because we agree with the regime, but because it’s in Australia’s national interest,” Albanese added.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who could become prime minister at elections due by May, called for Sadeghi to be expelled over his post. Dutton described Sadeghi’s words as “completely and utterly at odds with what is in our country’s best interests.”

Sadeghi did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Australia officially rebuked Sadeghi in August for endorsing Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin’s hope that “wiping out the Zionist plague out of the holy lands of Palestine happens no later than 2027.”

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Hezbollah group confirmed on Saturday that its leader and one of its founding members, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a southern suburb of Beirut.

The killing of the powerful militant group’s longtime leader sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the Middle East, where he has been a dominant political and military figure for more than three decades.

Nasrallah, linked by Israel to numerous deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets, has been on Israel’s kill list for decades. His assassination is by far the biggest and most consequential of Israel’s targeted killings in years, and significantly escalates the war in the Middle East. Hezbollah is backed by Iran, Israel’s chief regional rival.

The Israeli military said it carried out a precise airstrike on Friday while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.

Immediately after the confirmation from Hezbollah, people starting firing in the air in Beirut and across Lebanon to mourn Nasrallah’s death.

“Wish it was our kids, not you, Sayyid!” said one woman, using an honorific title for Nasrallah, as she clutched her baby in the western city of Baabda.

“We don’t believe he is killed,” a woman draped in black tearfully told al-Manar TV in Bekaa, western Lebanon. “We don’t. We left our homes and came here for him and for the resistance.”

In his first public remarks since the killing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s targeting of Nasrallah was “an essential condition to achieving the goals we set.”

“He wasn’t another terrorist. He was the terrorist,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu said Nasrallah’s killing would help bring displaced Israelis back to their homes in the north and would pressure Hamas to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza. But with the threat of retaliation high, he warned the coming days would bring “significant challenges” and warned Iran against trying to strike.

“There is no place in Iran or in the Middle East that Israel’s long arm cannot reach. And today you know how much that is true,” he said.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes Friday that leveled six apartment buildings. Ali Karki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front, and other commanders were also killed, the Israeli military said.

A statement from Hezbollah said Nasrallah — who led the group for more than three decades — “has joined his fellow martyrs.” The group vowed to “continue the holy war against the enemy and in support of Palestine.”

Hezbollah started firing rockets on Israel in support of Gaza on Oct. 8, a day after Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Since then, the two sides have been engaged in escalating cross-border strikes.

Israel has vowed to step up pressure on Hezbollah until it halts its attacks that have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from communities near the Lebanese border. The recent fighting has also displaced more than 200,000 Lebanese in the past week, according to the United Nations.

Earlier this month, thousands of explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated, killing dozens of people and maiming thousands, including many civilians. Israel is widely believed to be behind the attack. Israel has killed several other top Hezbollah commanders in Beirut, especially in the past two weeks, in addition to the attack that killed Nasrallah.

In Beirut’s southern suburbs, smoke rose and the streets were empty Saturday after the area was pummeled overnight by heavy Israeli airstrikes. Shelters were overflowing with displaced people. Many families slept in public squares, on beaches or in their cars. On the roads leading to the mountains above the capital, hundreds of people could be seen fleeing on foot, holding infants and whatever belongings they could carry.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas sent condolences to its ally, Hezbollah, and said “assassinations will only increase the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine in determination and resolve.”

Iran’s supreme leader announced five days of public mourning and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Nasrallah “the flag-bearer of resistance” in the region.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Tehran, waving Hezbollah flags and chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to Netanyahu the murderer.”

Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said Iran will be under significant pressure to respond to Nasrallah’s killing without escalating violence in the region.

“Iran understands that its military options are limited, given the conventional military superiority of Israel and the U.S.” Juneau told The Associated Press.

Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Saturday that the killing of Nasrallah was “not the end of our toolbox,” indicating that more strikes were planned. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called it “the most important targeted strike since the founding of the State of Israel.” Late Saturday, Gallant’s office said he was meeting with top army commanders to discuss the expansion of military activities along Israel’s northern front.

The military said Saturday it was mobilizing three more battalions of reserve soldiers to serve across the country. It already sent two brigades to northern Israel to prepare for a possible ground invasion.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Israel has inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah’s capabilities over the past week by targeting immediate threats and strategic weapons, such as larger, guided missiles. But he said much of Hezbollah’s arsenal remains intact and that Israel would continue to target the group.

Air raid sirens sounded across central Israel on Saturday afternoon, including at the Tel Aviv international airport, shortly after Netanyahu returned from a trip to the U.S.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen. Houthi rebels based in Yemen later said they were behind the attack targeting Ben Gurion Airport.

The Israeli military updated guidelines for Israeli citizens, canceling gatherings of more than 1,000 people due to the threat.

Approximately 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes along the Lebanese border for almost a year. This month, Israel’s government said halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the country’s north to allow residents to return to their homes is an official goal.

On Saturday morning, the Israeli military carried out more than 140 airstrikes in southern Beirut and eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, including targeting a storage facility for anti-ship missiles in Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. Israel said the missiles were stored beneath civilian apartment buildings. Hezbollah launched dozens of projectiles across northern and central Israel and deep into the Israel-occupied West Bank, damaging some buildings in the northern town of Safed.

The Israeli army again warned Lebanese residents to stay away from Hezbollah combat equipment and facilities, including in the southern suburbs of Beirut and southern Lebanon. The U.S. State Department issued an alert urging American citizens to leave the country.

A total of 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon in less than two weeks, the country’s health minister said Saturday.

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Lidman reported from Tel Aviv. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell, Kareem Chehayeb and Ahmad Mousa in Beirut; Lujain Jo in Baabda, Lebanon; Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv; Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran; Eleanor H. Reich in Washington; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.