Foreign nationals told to leave Lebanon as war fears surge

Sunday, 4 August 2024 17:09

By Agencies

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 Iran-backed 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 Tehran-aligned 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.

Israeli forces meanwhile kept bombarding the Gaza Strip, witnesses and officials in the besieged Hamas-ruled territory said, with no end in sight to the nearly 10-month war triggered by the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel.

At least 25 Palestinians were killed and several others injured on Sunday in an Israeli strike targeting two schools that were sheltering displaced people near Gaza City on Sunday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

The Israeli military said "the schools were used by Hamas' Al-Furqan Battalion as a hiding place for its---operatives and as command centres used to plan and execute attacks against IDF (Israel Defence Forces) troops and the State of Israel."

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.

France on Sunday also urged its nationals living in Iran to "temporarily leave", warning Iranian airspace and airports could close.

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