U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed on Wednesday for a halt to fighting between Israel and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
However, heavy Israeli air strikes on a large historic Lebanese port city have demonstrated that there was no respite.
Huge clouds of thick smoke billowed above residential buildings in Tyre, a UNESCO-listed port city in south Lebanon, which Israel began bombing roughly three hours after issuing an order online for residents to flee central areas.
Tens of thousands of people have already fled Tyre as Israel steps up its campaign to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both close allies of its arch-Middle East enemy Iran.
The port is typically a bustling hub for the south – with fishermen, tourists and even UN peacekeepers on a break from deployments near the border spending time there by the sea.
But Israel’s evacuation orders this week have for the first time encompassed swathes of Tyre, right up to its ancient castle.
“We are better off dying with dignity than living on the street,” said Batoum Zalghout, 25, who fled the latest evacuation zone for another part of the city.
She said she had been already displaced with her two children five times as Israel expanded its strikes across Lebanon.
Tyre mayor Hassan Dabouq said the city’s historic sites were not hit. Minister of Culture Mohammad al-Murtada said the ministry was in touch with UNESCO to call for the city’s people and heritage sites to be protected.
In Gaza, where Israel has intensified an assault on the northern edge of the territory since killing the leader of Hamas last week, health authorities reported at least 20 people killed in fresh Israeli strikes, most in the north.
Washington has called on its ally Israel to do more to help Gazans. A failure to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza could create more insurgents, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. Israel denies blocking aid from the battle zone.
Blinken, who has travelled to the Middle East regularly since the outbreak of the war, is making his first trip since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, its most-wanted enemy, whose death Washington hopes can provide an impetus for peace.
The trip is also the last major U.S. peace push before the Nov. 5 presidential election pitting Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald Trump, which could scramble U.S. policy in the region.
Washington aims to head off a further widening of the conflict in anticipation of Israeli retaliation for an Iranian Oct. 1 missile attack, launched by Tehran in solidarity with Hezbollah and Hamas.
Blinken said on Wednesday that Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
After Blinken left Israel, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited a military base and told troops that once Israel attacked Iran everyone would understand their strength.
After meeting Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken travelled to regional power Saudi Arabia, where he met de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The State Department said they discussed efforts to end the Gaza war and hard fighting in Lebanon.
In Lebanon, Israel’s military said it had killed three Hezbollah commanders and some 70 fighters in the south in the past 48 hours.
A day earlier it confirmed it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the militant group’s heir apparent leader after Hassan Nasrallah’s death in a Sept. 27 Israeli airstrike.
A month of intense Israeli strikes on Lebanon has killed nearly the entire leadership of Hezbollah, dealing a succession of blows without precedent in the four decades of Israel’s battles against the group.
Killing Sinwar last week caps that with a major blow to Hamas in Gaza.
Blinken said it was now time for Israel to turn its military victories into “an enduring strategic success”.
“The focus needs to be on getting the hostages home, ending this war and having a clear plan for what follows.”
In the year since fighters directed by Sinwar rampaged through Israeli towns killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, Israel has laid Gaza to waste to root out Hamas, killing nearly 43,000 Palestinians.
Over the past month, it has also dramatically ramped up the war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, Iran’s strongest proxy force, which had been rocketing Israel in support of the Palestinians.
Around 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced.
The U.S. sees Sinwar’s demise as a chance to bring peace, feeling it would now be easier for Netanyahu and his far-right government to argue that major goals have been achieved in Gaza.
But Gaza residents say that since Sinwar’s death, Israel has only intensified an assault on northern areas where Israel says Hamas fighters are regrouping.
Hospitals in the area have ceased functioning and were running out of coffins and shrouds for the dead.
An emergency UN-backed polio vaccination campaign, launched after a Gaza baby was paralysed by the disease for the first time in 25 years, was halted.
“We call on the world, which has failed to provide protection and shelter for our people and has been unable to deliver food and medicine, to make an effort to send shrouds for our fallen,” the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. (Reuters/NAN)
