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.

Foreign Nationals Calls To Leave Lebanon as War Fears Surge 

Several countries have urged their Foreign Nationals to leave Lebanon, as fears grow of a wider conflict in the Middle East. Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. Israel has not commented. His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a key role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response.

Diplomatic efforts by the US and other Western countries continue to try to de-escalate tensions across the region. A growing number of flights have been cancelled or suspended at the country’s only commercial airport in Beirut. The US, the UK, Australia, Sweden, France, Italy, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are among the countries to have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

Tents for Displaced Hit in War

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for its unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead. Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,550 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, was the group’s lead negotiator in efforts to end the war. His killing raised questions about the continued viability of efforts by Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators to broker a truce and exchange of hostages and prisoners.

On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday. The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies had been recovered from a residential building in north Gaza’s Jabaliya 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, with a separate attack on a house nearby in the same area killing three.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a school turned displacement shelter killed at least 17 people, the civil defense agency said. Israel said the facility was used by militants. An AFP correspondent reported Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling early Sunday in and around Gaza City, while witnesses said there was more shelling, gunfire and at least two air strikes on the territory’s south. The Israeli military said its air forces had struck “approximately 50 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the past 24 hours.

Footage posted on social media showed Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepting the rockets. There have been no reports of casualties. Israel’s air force responded by striking targets in southern Lebanon. In a separate development on Sunday morning, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Holon. The attacker was later “neutralized”, police said.

Also on Sunday, officials from the Hamas-run ministry of health in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had hit a tent inside a hospital, killing at least five people. The officials said 19 Palestinians had been killed on Sunday.

War ‘without constraints’:

Israeli ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region to protect U.S. personnel and defend Israel. Analysts have told AFP that a joint but measured action from Iran and its allies was likely, while Tehran said it expects Hezbollah to hit deeper inside Israel and no longer be confined to military targets.

U.S. President Joe Biden, asked by reporters if he thought Iran would stand down, said: “I hope so. I don’t know.” On Sunday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will visit Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart, his ministry said. Haniyeh’s killing “has brought the Middle East to its moment of greatest peril in years”, the International Crisis Group think tank said in a report issued on Saturday.

“The risk of a spiraling conflagration is high,” with the potential for a miscalculation that would trigger a war “without constraints … likely greater now than it was in April,” it added. On April 13, Iran launched its first ever direct attack on Israeli soil, firing a barrage of drones and missiles — most of which were intercepted — after a strike killed Revolutionary Guards at Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.

The ICG said that securing “a long overdue ceasefire” in Gaza was “the best way of meaningfully reducing tensions in the region.” Hamas officials but also some analysts as well as protesters in Israel have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war to safeguard his ruling hard-right coalition. On Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet he was “making every effort” to return the hostages and was prepared “to go a long way” to do so.