BEIRUT: Urgent calls for foreign nationals to leave Lebanon rose on Sunday, with France warning of a “very unstable” situation as Iran and its allies prepare their response to the killings blamed on Israel.
Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has traded with Israeli forces almost daily since the Gaza war broke out in October, said its fighters had fired rockets into northern Israel overnight.
The Israeli military said 30 missiles were fired from Lebanon, most of which were intercepted.
As Israel is on high alert and expects major military action by armed groups linked to Tehran, including Hezbollah and Hamas, medics and police said two people were killed in a stabbing attack in a Tel Aviv suburb on Sunday.
The attacker, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, was “neutralized” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued to bombard the Gaza Strip, witnesses and officials in the besieged Hamas-controlled territory said, with nearly 10 months of Israeli aggression in Gaza on the horizon.
France, Canada and Jordan were among the latest governments to call on their citizens to leave Lebanon.
“In a highly volatile security context, French nationals have been 'urgently requested' to avoid travel to Lebanon and those already in the country 'to now make arrangements to leave…as soon as possible,'” the Foreign Office said in Paris. he said.
The United States and Britain issued similar warnings.
Several Western airlines have suspended flights to the region.
On Sunday, Qatar Airways said that “in light of recent developments in Lebanon” the Doha-Beirut route would “operate exclusively during daylight hours” until at least Monday.
The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday, hours after Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's military chief in Beirut, prompted vows of revenge by Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance” of Tehran-backed armed groups.
Israel, accused by Hamas, Iran and others of carrying out the attack that killed Haniyeh, has not directly commented.
Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 39,550 people, according to the territory's health ministry.
Haniyeh, Hamas's political chief, was the group's chief negotiator in efforts to end the war.
His killing raised questions about the continued viability of efforts by Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators to broker a ceasefire and swap hostages and prisoners.
On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies were recovered from a residential building in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza after an Israeli airstrike.
Medics at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza said at least five people were killed and 16 wounded in an Israeli drone strike on tents housing displaced Palestinians in a medical complex, while a separate attack on a house nearby in the same area killed three.
On Saturday, an Israeli attack on a school that had been turned into a shelter for displaced people killed at least 17 people, the civil defense agency said. Israel claims the facility was used by militants.
An AFP correspondent reported Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling early Sunday morning in and around Gaza City, while witnesses said there was further shelling, shooting and at least two airstrikes in the south of the territory.
Israel's military said its air force struck “approximately 50 terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the past 24 hours.
Israel's ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region to protect American personnel and defend Israel.
Analysts told AFP that joint but moderate action by Iran and its allies was likely, while Tehran said it expected Hezbollah to reach deeper inside Israel and no longer be limited to military targets.
Asked by reporters if he thought Iran would back down, US President Joe Biden said: “I hope so. I don't know.”
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will visit Tehran on Sunday to meet with his Iranian counterpart, his ministry said.
Haniyeh's killing “has brought the Middle East to its moment of greatest danger in years,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said in a report issued on Saturday.
“The risk of a spiraling fire is high,” with the potential for a miscalculation to spark a war “unlimited … probably greater than in April,” he added.
On April 13, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israeli soil, firing a barrage of drones and missiles — most of them intercepted — after a strike killed Revolutionary Guards at Tehran's consulate in Damascus.
The ICG said securing a “long overdue ceasefire” in Gaza was “the best way to meaningfully reduce tensions in the region”.
Hamas officials, as well as some analysts and protesters in Israel, have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war to protect his ruling hard-right coalition.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told his cabinet that he was “making every effort” to return the hostages and was prepared to “go a long way” to do so.
