Region

BEIRUT — Calm returned to Lebanon's southern border Friday as a temporary truce took effect in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according to Lebanese state media and the Israeli military.

Since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, Lebanon's southern border with Israel has witnessed deadly exchanges of fire, primarily involving the Israeli forces and Lebanon's Hizbollah movement, as well as Palestinian fighters.

Hizbollah has yet to say whether it will comply with the terms of the agreement that was brokered by Qatar with help from Egypt and the United States.

"A precarious calm reigned on the southern border, with the humanitarian truce in Gaza coming into effect at 7:00 in the morning (0500 GMT)," Lebanon's official National News Agency reported.

Six hours after the Gaza pause went into force, an Israeli military spokesman confirmed to AFP that there had been no subsequent incidents or firing so far across the Lebanon border.

The four-day truce in the Gaza Strip will see Hamas exchange 50 hostages seized from Israel during the October 7 attacks for 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

An AFP journalist in the Marjayoun border region said he had heard exchanges of fire 10 minutes prior to the truce, before the guns fell silent.

A resident in the Alma Al-Shaab border region also said the situation was calm and that he could no longer hear Israeli planes or reconnaissance drones flying overhead.

On the eve of the truce, Hizbollah had intensified its cross-border attacks on the Israeli army, which in response pounded southern Lebanon.

On Friday, the powerful Iran-backed Shiite group claimed responsibility for 22 attacks on Israeli positions from southern Lebanon, where it lost seven of its fighters during the day.

Hizbollah says it has been acting in support of Hamas since the movement’s October 7 surprise attacks on Israel.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and its retaliatory air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed nearly 15,000 people, thousands of them children, according to the Hamas government of the Palestinian territory.

The cross-border clashes between Israel and Hizbollah have claimed 109 lives in Lebanon, at least 77 of them Hizbollah fighters and 14 civilians, according to an AFP count.

Among those killed were three journalists, the son of the head of HIzbollah’s parliamentary bloc and an official from Hamas’s military wing in Lebanon.

On the Israeli side, six soldiers and three civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli authorities.

BERLIN — With the power out, the water off, medical supplies short and hundreds of war injured and sheltering Palestinians crowding the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Ahmed Abunada was faced with impossible choices.

"Who do I let die, this woman or that man?... I do not have the time to do reconstructive surgery on this child, I will have to amputate," said the 47-year-old surgeon, who left Gaza earlier this month to escape the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

"These are very difficult decisions for a doctor," said the German doctor of Palestinian origin.

Abunada was received on Friday by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier along with seven of his compatriots, who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip when the Rafah border crossing between the Palestinian territory and Egypt was opened to foreign nationals.

"We were operating on the floor, on gurneys. There were no beds left," he told AFP about his time in the hospital.

"The week that I left the hospital, the situation got worse. We had no more electricity, no more water, no more oxygen," he said.

Without oxygen it was no longer possible for Abunada to operate. "That is why I left, on the 28th day of the conflict."

Al Shifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, was a key focus for the Israeli forces, who said Hamas used a tunnel complex under the compound to stage attacks, a claim the Palestinian militants and hospital officials denied.

"I worked there as a doctor and I did not notice anything like that," Abunada said, when asked about Hamas's alleged presence at the facility.

Last week, the hospital's director Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who has been frequently quoted by international media about conditions inside the complex, was arrested by Israeli forces.

"I hope they free him soon," said Abunada.

Abunada, who did his medical studies in Germany, has lived in Gaza for the last eight years with his wife and four children, one of whom was injured before the family’s departure.

Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas, responded with persistent bombardments and a ground campaign, which have killed nearly 15,000 people, according to Hamas officials.

As the head of vascular surgery at Al Shifa, Abunada barely had time to rest after the war started.

“Naturally, I had to have breaks to sleep. But sleeping without being able to lie down is difficult,” he said.

“The bombardments were everywhere. It was too loud to sleep.”

On Friday, Abunada gave his account to the German president and asked for more aid to enter Gaza.

“I called for the creation of a medical air-bridge from Germany” to deliver supplies, the surgeon said.

“There are lots of German doctors of Palestinian origin. They could be made available and could help.”

Not all members of Abunada’s family have left the Gaza Strip. “My mother is there, she is 85. I worry about her a lot.” The elderly woman fled her home in Gaza to the south during the war on foot, he said.

BERLIN — With the power out, the water off, medical supplies short and hundreds of war injured and sheltering Palestinians crowding the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Ahmed Abunada was faced with impossible choices.

"Who do I let die, this woman or that man?... I do not have the time to do reconstructive surgery on this child, I will have to amputate," said the 47-year-old surgeon, who left Gaza earlier this month to escape the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

"These are very difficult decisions for a doctor," said the German doctor of Palestinian origin.

Abunada was received on Friday by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier along with seven of his compatriots, who were evacuated from the Gaza Strip when the Rafah border crossing between the Palestinian territory and Egypt was opened to foreign nationals.

"We were operating on the floor, on gurneys. There were no beds left," he told AFP about his time in the hospital.

"The week that I left the hospital, the situation got worse. We had no more electricity, no more water, no more oxygen," he said.

Without oxygen it was no longer possible for Abunada to operate. "That is why I left, on the 28th day of the conflict."

Al Shifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, was a key focus for the Israeli forces, who said Hamas used a tunnel complex under the compound to stage attacks, a claim the Palestinian militants and hospital officials denied.

"I worked there as a doctor and I did not notice anything like that," Abunada said, when asked about Hamas's alleged presence at the facility.

Last week, the hospital's director Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who has been frequently quoted by international media about conditions inside the complex, was arrested by Israeli forces.

"I hope they free him soon," said Abunada.

Abunada, who did his medical studies in Germany, has lived in Gaza for the last eight years with his wife and four children, one of whom was injured before the family’s departure.

Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas, responded with persistent bombardments and a ground campaign, which have killed nearly 15,000 people, according to Hamas officials.

As the head of vascular surgery at Al Shifa, Abunada barely had time to rest after the war started.

“Naturally, I had to have breaks to sleep. But sleeping without being able to lie down is difficult,” he said.

“The bombardments were everywhere. It was too loud to sleep.”

On Friday, Abunada gave his account to the German president and asked for more aid to enter Gaza.

“I called for the creation of a medical air-bridge from Germany” to deliver supplies, the surgeon said.

“There are lots of German doctors of Palestinian origin. They could be made available and could help.”

Not all members of Abunada’s family have left the Gaza Strip. “My mother is there, she is 85. I worry about her a lot.” The elderly woman fled her home in Gaza to the south during the war on foot, he said.

GAZA STRIP, Palestine — A doctor at Gaza's largest hospital Al Shifa told AFP that the facility's director and several other medical personnel were arrested by Israeli forces on Thursday.

The director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, has been frequently quoted by international media about the conditions inside Al Shifa, a major focus of the Israeli ground offensive following the militants' October 7 attacks.

The Israeli army, which raided the hospital last week, has alleged that Hamas fighters used a tunnel complex beneath the facility in Gaza City to stage attacks. 

Hamas and hospital officials have repeatedly denied the claims.

"Doctor Mohammad Abu Salmiya was arrested along with several other senior doctors," said Khalid Abu Samra, a chief of department at the hospital.

An official in the Hamas-run health ministry specified to AFP that one other doctor and two nurses had been detained, as well as the hospital director.

In a statement, Hamas said it "strongly denounces" the arrest of Salmiya and his colleagues, calling on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organisations to work towards their "immediate release".

Instructions to evacuate the hospital were issued on Saturday, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients and displaced towards the supposedly safer south of the Palestinian territory.

Salmiya told AFP last week that he had received the evacuation order from Israeli forces after having refused a previous one.

But the Israeli army said the evacuations were carried out at the "request" of Abu Salmiya.

The military released an audio recording presented as a conversation between Salmiya and a senior Israeli officer in which the two men blame each other for the evacuation.

Israeli officials claim Hamas operated a command centre in tunnels under the hospital for years, an accusation the movement and medical personnel reject.

On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers escorted journalists to a tunnel shaft they said was part of a vast underground network used by Hamas.

Al Shifa hospital has been the scene of an extended Israeli special forces operation as part of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where the government says more than 14,000 people have been killed, most of them women and children.

BEIRUT — Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah movement said on Thursday that five of its fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, had been killed, amid skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border since the Israeli war on Gaza began.

Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hizbollah's parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, was "martyred on the road to Jerusalem", the group said in a statement, the phrase it has been using to announce the death of its members due to Israeli fire since the war started on October 7.

It issued separate statements with the identities and photographs of four other fighters who were also killed.

A source close to the family, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, told AFP that Abbas Raad "was killed with a number of other Hizbollah members" in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a house in south Lebanon's Beit Yahun.

Lebanon's official National News Agency said Wednesday that "an air strike launched by the Israeli enemy... on a house in Beit Yahun killed four people". It did not identify the victims.

Since October 7, the frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between Israel and Shiite Muslim movement Hizbollah, but also Palestinian groups, raising fears of a broader conflagration.

Israel's army said in statements on Wednesday evening that it had struck a number of Hizbollah targets and sources of fire from Lebanon, including a Hizbollah "terrorist cell" and infrastructure.

Since the cross-border exchanges began, 107 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. At least 75 are Hizbollah fighters but the toll also included at least 14 civilians, three of them journalists.

On the Israeli side, six soldiers and three civilians have been killed, according to authorities.

The strike came just hours after a four-day truce in Gaza was announced between Israel and Hamas, a Hizbollah ally.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who visited Beirut on Wednesday, warned in an interview that if the Hamas-Israel ceasefire begins but “does not continue... the conditions in the region will not remain the same as before the ceasefire and the scope of the war will expand”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/DOHA — Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war.

In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the Israeli war on Gaza, Palestinian fighters will release during a four-day truce 50 women and children.

Qatar confirmed on Wednesday that Hamas and Israel had reached an agreement on a four-day humanitarian pause in exchange for the release of 50 hostages in Gaza.

"The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," Qatar's foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons. The number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement," it added.

Qatar has been engaged in weeks of intense, behind-the-scenes negotiations aimed at freeing some of the 240 hostages held in Gaza in return for a temporary ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid.

Qatar said the deal had been undertaken with Egypt and the United States as well as Hamas and Israel and would include "the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs".

Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the Gulf state hoped the deal would “establish a comprehensive and sustainable agreement” that would “put an end to the war and the bloodshed and lead to serious talks for a comprehensive and just peace process”.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari told AFP the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas would be staggered over the four-day truce.

“The truce begins and then every day within the four days we will have a number of hostages coming out... and that number should reach 50 by day four,” he said.

The expectation was that the initial 50 women and children hostages released by Hamas would be followed by further releases to extend the initial four-day truce.

“If by then the Palestinians can commit to an additional number, then the truce can be extended,” Ansari said.

“It will take some time to get all the civilians out within these parameters, it will take some time also to... ascertain how many we have left,” he said.

The temporary cessation of hostilities would not come into effect immediately and would “need some time to be prepared on the ground”, he said.

Hamas released a statement welcoming the “humanitarian truce” and said it would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails.

“The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it,” a Hamas official told AFP.

Israeli launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government in the territory, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.

Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day “pause” in its six-week-old air, land and sea assault of Gaza, while it stressed that the agreement did not spell the end of the war.

For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day’s “pause”, the Israeli government said.

‘Brave souls’ 

Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another group that took part in the October 7 surprise attacks, had earlier told AFP the truce would include a ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza.

The negotiations have involved the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel’s overseas spy agency Mossad, Egyptian intelligence, and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel.

A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50 earmarked for staggered release from Thursday.

US President Joe Biden said he was “extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls... will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented”.

Qatar’s foreign ministry confirmed the deal, saying that “a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons” would be released in exchange for the hostages.

“The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension,” the ministry said.

Misgivings 

Ahead of the Israeli Cabinet vote, Netanyahu had faced criticism from within his right-wing coalition, some of whom thought the deal gave too much to the Palestinian militants.

Hardline Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir signalled he would vote against the agreement, saying it should include the release of Israeli soldiers also taken by Hamas.

But with dozens of families in Israel who are beyond desperate to have their loved ones returned home, and the Israeli public gripped by the hostages’ fate, the government ultimately set aside any misgivings.

Israel’s hawkish Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said before the crunch meeting that he had won assurances that the deal would not spell the end of the war.

“Immediately after we have exhausted this phase” he said, security operations would “continue in full force”.

In a statement, the Israeli government underscored that the truce agreement would not mean the end of the war in Gaza.

‘Unbearable situation’ 

Earlier, Gaza resident Hamza Abdel Razeq said he would welcome any ceasefire agreement, hoping it would bring some respite for people who have endured Israel’s bombing and expanding ground offensive.

“The people are really suffering,” he told AFP. “I believe it will pave the way for longer truces or even a total ceasefire.”

A US official said there was also hope that the deal would lead to a “full pause” in fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border between Israel and Hizbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran.

Another Gaza resident, Mahmud Abu Najm, said: “We... pray to God for its success because the people are enduring an unbearable situation.”

Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in.

Six weeks into the war, Israel has come under intense international pressure to implement a humanitarian ceasefire.

But in recent days it has pressed its offensive into northern Gaza.

The Israeli military said air strikes had hit “around 250” Hamas targets in the past day, destroying three underground shafts in the Jabalia area, which it said it had fully surrounded.

At Jabalia’s Indonesian Hospital, the Hamas-run health ministry said strikes had killed dozens, but there was no independent confirmation of the toll.

The Israeli forces said later its troops had “directly targeted” the source of fire from within the Indonesian Hospital.

Doctors Without Borders said three doctors, including two it employed, were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al Awda hospital in Jabalia refugee camp.

Israel says Hamas uses medical facilities to hide fighters and as bases for operations, making them legitimate military objectives while insisting it does everything possible to limit harm to civilians.

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank — Palestinian doctor Ahmed Al Beytawi lived through the bloody clashes of two intifadas in the occupied West Bank, but the war in Gaza has reached new levels of violence.

Every day the 62-year-old doctor walks past a memorial outside the Ramallah hospital he runs honouring 22 Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces in 2000 at the start of the second intifada, or uprising.

But the images of death and destruction seen since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7 are something he says he "has never seen" before.

In 2000, the "bodies were piling up, the morgues were full "and we couldn't go out" to bury them.

But the latest war in Gaza "is much more violent", he said.

Israel launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which the Hamas authorities say has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.

More than two thirds of hospitals in the besieged Palestinian territory are out of service, there is no electricity in the morgues, and bodies line the streets.

In Gaza, Beytawi's colleagues have been digging mass graves under Israeli tank fire and even in the courtyards of their hospitals.

Former soldier Wassef Erakat, 76, who fought in Lebanon during the 1975-1990 civil war, agrees this war is "the hardest and the most violent" he has ever witnessed.

Nearly half of the homes in the coastal Gaza Strip have been destroyed in relentless Israeli bombardments, UN officials say.

And some 1.5 million Gazans — more than half the 2.4 million population — have been internally displaced.

But for the former artillery officer for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) the Hamas and Islamic Jihad operations against Israel are also “unprecedented” and “meticulously planned”.

Unprecedented 

death tolls 

The information war has added a new dimension, igniting social networks.

Every day, the groups publish propaganda videos showing their fighters firing rocket launchers at tanks or stuffing explosives into Israeli armoured vehicles.

The conflict has moved way beyond the stone-throwing days of the first Intifada, which exploded in 1987 and ended with the 1993 Oslo accords signed by then PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

And with the increased violence, the death tolls have reached unprecedented levels.

The October 7 surprise attack by Hamas on southern Israeli communities left 1,200 people dead — the worst death toll since the creation of Israel in 1948.

On the Palestinian side more people have died in Gaza in the current wave of Israeli strikes than during the two Intifadas put together.

And in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli fire — more than the total of the previous nine months.

For the first time in two decades, Israeli F-16s are again striking the West Bank from the air.

Heavily-armed Israeli troops are also again carrying out raids in Palestinian towns, manoeuvres supposedly eliminated in some areas of the West Bank by the Oslo accords.

“Israel felt it had been victorious because of its weapons and believed it had done away with the resistance,” said Mohammed Zaghloul, recently released from prison after serving 20 years for attempted murder of Israeli soldiers.

But the fierce fighting in Gaza has changed the dynamic, said the former fighter with the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s Fateh movement.

“We have entered a totally different phase from the earlier ones in the conflict,” he said, highlighting the fears of the “regional ramifications” of the conflict.

Once the current violence has died down however, it “could bring something politically positive” for advancing the Palestinian cause, he added.