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GENEVA — UN humanitarian officials called on Tuesday for urgent action to stop the escalating conflict in Lebanon from spiralling into a similar scene of devastation as seen in Gaza.

"We need to do everything we can to stop that from happening," said Matthew Hollingworth, Lebanon country director for the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP).

Speaking from Beirut, he told a press briefing in Geneva that he spent the first half of the year coordinating WFP's operations in Gaza before taking the helm of its Lebanon office, and was deeply concerned by the similarities.

"It is in my mind from the time I wake until the time I sleep, that we could go into the same sort of spiral of doom... We shouldn't allow that to happen," he said. 

Israel's war in Gaza, launched after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack inside Israel, has killed more than 41,900 people, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

The October 7 attack left 1,206 dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

The resulting conflict has spilled into Lebanon, with intensifying airstrikes and Israeli troops battling Hizbollah militants on the ground.

Israel's bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 1,100 people and displaced upwards of a million in less than two weeks.

Same patterns

Hollingworth said many people were fleeing because they "have watched over the last year as the war in Gaza has continued and neighbourhoods have been decimated and pounded, and that is deep in their gut, in their hearts, in their minds".

James Elder, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF, warned that "the commonalities are unfortunately absolutely there to be seen, whether it is displacement on the ground, impact upon children or language being used ... [to] soften the realities on the ground".

"We are seeing the same patterns that we saw in Gaza," added Jeremy Laurence of the UN rights office.

"The devastation is beyond belief for all people in Lebanon as it is in Gaza. We can't let this happen again."

Significant needs

Humanitarians are working to address the soaring needs, but Hollingworth insisted that what was needed was to "de-escalate".

While WFP is currently able to reach around 150,000 people a day, they "need to be reaching, at this point, almost a million people per day", he said.

At the same time, he highlighted that 1,900 hectares of agricultural land had been burned in southern Lebanon over the past year, mainly in the past couple of weeks, while 12,000 hectares of productive farmland had been abandoned. 

"We have very significant needs moving forward," Hollingworth said, lamenting that the WFP was facing a $115 million funding gap to cover the towering needs over the next three months.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) meanwhile said it had registered 16 attacks on health care in Lebanon since mid-September, leaving 65 healthcare workers dead and 40 injured.

At the same time five of the country's hospitals were now non-functional and four were only partially functional, Ian Clarke, WHO's deputy incident manager in the country, told reporters, speaking via video link from Beirut.

Nearly 100 primary health care facilities had also been forced to close, he said, warning that with limited access to care, "we are facing a situation where there is a much higher risk of disease outbreaks".

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israel's bombardment of Hizbollah's south Beirut stronghold has forced tens of thousands to flee to the city centre, but many in sectarian Lebanon view the newcomers with suspicion, worried they too might become targets.

For weeks, Israeli strikes have widened in pursuit of Hizbollah members, leading many Lebanese to shun civilians from the same religious community as the Iran-backed group.

"Our neighbours found out we were housing people from Dahiyeh [Beirut's southern suburbs] and they panicked and started asking questions," said 30-year-old Christina, asking to be identified by only one name.

She took in displaced people but soon asked them to leave after neighbours, concerned the newcomers might be Hizbollah fighters, bombarded her with messages.

Hizbollah, the only side to retain its arsenal after the 1975-90 civil war, has strong support within Lebanon's Shiite Muslim community.

But Lebanon remains split over the group's decision to open a front against Israel in solidarity with Gaza and drag the country into war.

Lebanon's power-sharing system divides authority among 18 religious sects, with Shiites, Sunnis and Christians maintaining a fragile balance.

Many are still haunted by the civil war, which saw families displaced and homes seized, with the latest Israel-Hizbollah war reviving distrust and sectarianism in the divided country.

"There are growing tensions and suspicions towards displaced people because they are from the same religious group as Hizbollah," Christina said.

"Some people are scared that one of their family members might be a target and they don't want to risk" it, she told AFP.

'Bearded men' 

After nearly a year of cross-border clashes, Israel intensified its bombing campaign on September 23, killing more than 1,110 people, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

More than one million people, about a sixth of Lebanon's population, have been displaced, many flocking to Beirut which is now overwhelmed.

The influx has strained services in the crisis-hit country, with traffic congestion, disruptions to daily life and garbage piling up on the streets.

According to the education ministry, 973 public schools around the country have become makeshift shelters, with 773 of them unable to welcome any more displaced.

Panic gripped Souheir, a 58-year-old homemaker, after a displaced Shiite family moved into her building.

The women wore chadors, a full-body robe that is an unfamiliar sight in central Beirut.

"We've been seeing more women in chadors, bearded men and young men in black -- a sight we're not used to seeing," she added.

Souheir admitted she was not immune to the general paranoia.

When she went for coffee at a friend's, she saw bearded men on the balcony -- displaced relatives who sought refuge there.

She cut her visit short because she worried they could be Hizbollah members.

"People are looking at each other with suspicion on the streets," she said. "They're scared of each other."

Tensions are also high outside Beirut, where Israeli strikes have hit displaced people beyond Hizbollah's strongholds, including in the Druze village of Baadaran.

"People used to rent out houses to anyone at first, but now they're being extra-cautious," said Emad, 68, who lives in a Druze village about an hour away from Baadaran.

Elie, 30, who asked to be identified only by his first name, said no one in his Christian village had rented out to the displaced, who mostly live in shelters nearby.

"People are scared because we can't know if there are Hizbollah members among" them, he said.

"They also fear that the displaced could stay in the apartments permanently or semi-permanently since many of their houses were destroyed."

Civil war memories 

Incidents of displaced people breaking into empty buildings in search of a place to sleep have revived memories of the civil war, when more than 150,000 people were killed and militias seized homes.

Last week, police said "a very small number" of displaced people broke into private properties and that they were "working to remove them".

Businessman Riad, 60, said his sister-in-law had been house-sitting their central Beirut apartment after repeated enquiries about rentals.

"We experienced this in the '70s and '80s. Even if you asked an acquaintance to live in your house," armed groups would seize the apartment anyway and give it to displaced families from their own community, he said.

"It took some people a decade before regaining their house... This is why people are panicking," he added.

"It happened once and it will happen again."

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel ramped up its ground offensive against Hizbollah along Lebanon's southern coast on Tuesday, after deploying more troops in the country and urging civilians living near the Mediterranean to evacuate.

The military's announcement followed prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to keep fighting a "sacred war" until Israel's enemies -- Hizbollah and Hamas — are defeated. Both groups have vowed no let-up in the multi-front conflict.

Israel expanded its military operations in Lebanon last month after Hizbollah opened a front in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, following the deadliest attack in its history on October 7, 2023.

While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has also focused on securing its northern border to allow tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return home.

Israel launched a wave of strikes against Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon on September 23, leaving at least 1,110 people dead since then and forcing more than a million people to flee their homes.

Israeli operations have for the most part focused on areas in the south and east of Lebanon, traditional strongholds of Hizbollah, as well as the Iran-backed group's main bastion in south Beirut.

While areas along the southern coast have not been spared, Israel's latest evacuation warning to residents suggested a further expansion of the conflict northwards along the coastline.

On its Telegram channel, the Israeli military said its 146th Division began "limited, localised, targeted operational activities" against Hizbollah targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.

The military had on Monday said it would expand its operations against Hizbollah to south Lebanon's coastal area and warned people to stay away from the shore.

The army "will soon operate in the maritime area against Hizbollah's terrorist activities" south of the Al-Awali river, army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on social media.

On Tuesday, he reiterated the call to residents of south Lebanon not to return home. 

Hizbollah said it had fired a salvo of rockets at Israeli troops in two areas of northern Israel. 

The intensity of Israeli strikes on southern Beirut, which has been repeatedly pounded even after a bombing killed Hizbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, decreased somewhat overnight, AFP correspondents said.

The official National News Agency said more strikes hit southern and eastern Lebanon.

'War of attrition' 

The expansion in the fighting in Lebanon came a day after Israelis and people around the world marked a year since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

The attack sparked Gaza's deadliest-ever war, which according to the health ministry in the territory has killed 41,909 people, also mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

It has since expanded into Lebanon, with Israeli troops battling Hizbollah, while other Iran-backed groups in the region including Yemen's Huthis have also stepped in.

As Iran awaits what Israel has said will be retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage last week, Tehran hailed the October 7 attack.

In a pre-recorded television address, Netanyahu vowed not to give up on the "sacred mission" of achieving the war's goals.

"As long as the enemy threatens our existence and the peace of our country, we will continue to fight. As long as our hostages are still in Gaza, we will continue to fight," said the Israeli leader.

Weakened but not crushed after a year of war, Hamas was defiant, with Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, saying the group would "keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy".

He also said scores of people taken hostage into Gaza last year were enduring a "very difficult" situation.

'No rehabilitation'

A senior Hamas official has acknowledged "several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat".

When the Gaza war began, Netanyahu vowed to "crush" Hamas, but troops have found themselves returning again to areas to confront signs the movement was trying to rebuild.

Netanyahu has vowed to bring home the hostages, but critics in Israel have accused him of obstructing mediation for a truce and hostage-release deal.

Vigils at massacre sites and rallies called for the return of hostages a year after their abduction.

Late Monday in Tel Aviv, musicians performed as victims' images flashed on screens at a ceremony attended by families and relatives of those killed and abducted.

"We know in our minds, our hearts, in every cell in our bodies: there will be no rehabilitation without the return of the hostages. All of them," said Nitza Corngold, whose son Tal Shoham was kidnapped.

'Graveyard' 

A year since the start of Israel's military offensive in Gaza, swathes of the territory have been reduced to rubble, and nearly all its 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on X Monday the war had turned Gaza into a "graveyard".

Israel's military says 350 soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began on October 27.

People in Gaza just want the war to end.

"I have grown old while watching my children hungry, scared, having nightmares and screaming day and night from the sound of the bombing and shells," said one displaced woman, Israa Abu Matar, 26.

GAZA STRIP, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — One year after Israel unleashed its war on Gaza, the Palestinian territory is unrecognisable and its residents are exhausted by displacement and shortages, with no end in sight.

"It felt like the first day of the war all over again", said Khaled Hawajri, 46, as the Israeli forces bombarded his Gaza neighbourhood on Monday, even as Israel marked the anniversary of Hamas attack.

"Last night we were terrorised by the bombardments from quadcopters and tank shells," said Hawajri, who has been displaced 10 times with his family of seven in the past year.

"We have endured a whole year in the north under bombardment, terror, and fear in the hearts of my children," he said, adding he had staying in Gaza's devastated north because "there is no safe place in the entire Strip".

On Monday, Gaza City was barely recognisable, ravaged by relentless air strikes and fighting.

Residents walked along sand-covered streets stripped of pavements, with buildings either destroyed or left without facades, while piles of rubble littered the roads.

With fuel in short supply and expensive, car traffic was almost nonexistent. Most people walked, cycled or used donkey carts.

"There is no electricity or petroleum products. Even firewood is not available. Food is almost non-existent", said 64-year-old Hussam Mansour, speaking from a street in Gaza City, surrounded by piles of rubble and sand.

The United Nations says 92 per cent of Gaza's roads and more than 84 per cent of its health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war.

Long war 

Mansour and his sons have all been displaced, and his apartment building was destroyed in an air strike.

"Now when I walk the streets, I do not recognise them anymore," he said.

Like Hawajri and Mansour, Gaza's 2.4 million inhabitants have endured hardship, with no signs of relief, even after Israel reassigned divisions to the north of the country where troops are fighting Hamas's Lebanese ally Hizbollah.

About 90 per cent of the population has been displaced at least once, the United Nations says.

"Last night was one of the hardest nights of the war, as if the war had just begun!" said 46-year-old Muhammad Al Muqayyid, displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

"I never imagined the war would last this long," he said.

"A year has gone and we have seen every kind of suffering, disease, hunger, danger and loss."

The Israeli military has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,909 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The UN acknowledges the figures to be reliable.

A year on, Israel has yet to achieve one of its main objectives: securing the return of all those taken hostage on October 7, 2023.

Of the 251 captured that day, 97 are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Israeli military is still carrying out operations in Gaza to free the hostages and crush Hamas, in power since 2007.

"There was a sudden ground invasion by tanks, and people were rushing out of their homes without taking anything with them, just carrying their children and running through the streets with fire and shells raining down on them", Muqayyid said, referring to an Israeli military operation in northern Gaza on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Hamas keeps fighting. Its armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it launched a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese official media said Israeli aircraft again bombed Hezbollah's south Beirut bastion on Monday, later reporting six strikes on the area, which has been repeatedy hit since late last month.

"Enemy warplanes launched successive strikes on the southern suburbs," the National News Agency said, later reporting "six strikes" on neighbourhoods in the area.

Lebanon's government said Monday that more than 400,000 people had fled an Israeli escalation against Lebanese militant group Hizbollah across the border into Syria in less than two weeks.

More than 300,000 of those who escaped from September 23 to Saturday were Syrians returning to their war-torn country, while more than 102,000 were Lebanese, a governmental crisis unit said.

Hizbollah group said on Monday it ordered its fighters not to attack Israeli troops who recently moved behind a UN peacekeeping position near a Lebanese border village.

The statement came a day after UNIFIL had warned Israel's operations near their position at Maroun Al Ras was "extremely dangerous" and compromised their safety, adding it had repeatedly informed Israel of their concerns.

Hizbollah said it reported "unusual movement of Israeli enemy forces behind a UNIFIL position, on the outskirts of the border village of Maroun Al Ras".

It ordered fighters "not to take action... to preserve the lives of the peacekeepers", quoting a field commander in its statement.

The group accused Israel of "trying to use UNIFIL forces as human shields".

Contacted by AFP, UNIFIL did not immediately respond.

On Saturday, UNIFIL said it remained in all positions near the border despite what it said was an Israeli request to "relocate".

Last week, Israel said it would start carrying out limited ground incursions into south Lebanon.

Hizbollah said it has clashed with Israeli troops in the Maroun Al Ras area and confronted attempted infiltrations there several times this week.

Israel has intensified its campaign against Lebanese militant group Hezbollah since September 23, killing more than 1,110 people and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah, stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.