BEIRUT: Urgent calls for foreign nationals to leave Lebanon grew on Sunday with France warning of "a highly volatile" situation as Iran and its allies ready their response to high-profile killings blamed on Israel.
Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war broke out in October, announced its fighters had fired a barrage of rockets at Israel's north overnight. The Israeli military said 30 projectiles were launched from Lebanon, with most of them intercepted.
With Israel on high alert anticipating major military action from armed groups including Hezbollah and Hamas, medics and police said two people were killed on Sunday in a stabbing attack in a Tel Aviv suburb. The assailant, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, was "neutralised" by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Israeli forces meanwhile kept bombarding the Gaza Strip, witnesses and officials in the besieged territory said, with no end in sight to the nearly 10-month war.
France, Canada and Jordan were among the latest governments to call for their citizens to leave Lebanon.
"In a highly volatile security context", French nationals were "urgently asked" to avoid travelling to Lebanon, and those already in the country "to make their arrangements now to leave... as soon as possible", the foreign ministry in Paris said. The United States and Britain have issued similar warnings.
On Sunday, the Saudi embassy in Beirut said in a statement posted on social media platform X that it was "following closely the developments in south Lebanon", near the border with Israel, and "reiterating its call for Saudi nationals to leave Lebanon's territory immediately".
Several Western airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon and other airports in the region.
On Sunday Qatar Airways said the Doha-Beirut route would "operate exclusively during daylight hours" at least until Monday.
The killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah's military chief in Beirut, has triggered vows of vengeance from Iran and the so-called "axis of resistance" of armed groups.
On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday, with strikes, shelling and gunfire reported in and around Gaza City and in the territory's south.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies had been recovered from a residential building in north Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli air strike.
Medics at central Gaza's Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said at least five people were killed and 16 wounded in an Israeli drone strike on tents housing displaced Palestinians at the medical complex. — AFP
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