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Hezbollah held a funeral on Monday for its top military chief and other members of the militant group a day after a deadly Israeli strike on south Beirut, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards urged revenge.Haytham Ali Tabatabai is the most senior commander from the Iran-backed group to be killed by Israel since a November 2024 ceasefire sought to end more than a year of hostilities between the two sides.Sunday’s raid came with Israel escalating its attacks on Lebanon and Washington increasing pressure on the government to disarm the group and cut off its sources of funding.Tehran slammed Tabatabai’s killing as “cowardly” while Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said “the right of the Axis of Resistance and Lebanese Hezbollah to avenge the blood of the brave fighters of Islam is unquestionable” — referring to Iran-backed armed groups hostile to Israel.Hundreds of supporters joined Monday’s funeral procession in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway, for Tabatabai and two of his companions, whose coffins were draped in the group’s yellow flags, an AFP correspondent said.The crowd yelled slogans against Israel and America, while supporters carried portraits of the group’s leaders and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.France’s foreign ministry and UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman expressed concern at the strike and urged restraint, with the UN’s Stephane Dujarric reminding parties that “civilians and civilian areas must not be targeted”.- ‘Civilian areas’ -Israel’s military had said it “eliminated the terrorist Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of general staff”.The group announced the deaths of Tabatabai and four other members in the attack.Hezbollah said Tabatabai assumed the role of military leader after the latest war with Israel, which saw the group heavily weakened and senior commanders killed including its longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah.Israel has carried out near-daily strikes on Lebanon despite the ceasefire, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure, and accusing the group of rearming.According to the truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and to have its military infrastructure there dismantled.Under a government-approved plan, Lebanon’s army is to finish disarming Hezbollah in the area by year’s end, before tackling the rest of the country.Hezbollah has rejected calls to surrender its weapons.After Tabatabai’s killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would “not allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power” and urged Lebanon’s government to “fulfil its commitment to disarm Hezbollah”.A source close to Hezbollah told AFP on condition of anonymity there were “two opinions within the group — those who wish to respond to the assassination and those who want to refrain from doing so — but the leadership tends to adopt the utmost forms of diplomacy at the present stage”.- ‘Very limited’ options -Senior Hezbollah official Ali Damush told the funeral that Tabatabai’s killing aimed to push Hezbollah into “surrendering and submitting, but this goal will never be achieved”.Israel was “worried about Hezbollah’s possible response — and should remain worried”, he said, urging Lebanese authorities to “confront the aggression by all means… and reject the pressures that seek to push Lebanon to comply with American dictates and Israeli conditions”.Atlantic Council researcher Nicholas Blanford told AFP that “Hezbollah’s options are very limited”.”Its support base is clamouring for revenge but if Hezbollah responds directly… Israel will strike back very hard and no one in Lebanon will thank Hezbollah for that,” he said.Sunday’s strike was the biggest blow to Hezbollah since the ceasefire “because of (Tabatabai’s) seniority… it demonstrates the Israelis can still locate and target senior officials despite whatever protective measures Hezbollah is undertaking” since the war, Blanford added.Lebanon’s army says it is implementing its plan to disarm Hezbollah, but the United States and Israel have accused Lebanon’s authorities of stalling.Condemning the attack, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Sunday that “the only way to consolidate stability” was through “extending the authority of the state over all its territory”.Last December, Hezbollah also lost a key supply route through Syria with the fall of longtime ruler and ally Bashar al-Assad.

Overwhelmed health workers rushed from patient to patient in makeshift tents in Sudan, trying to help even though they too had barely escaped the fall of El-Fasher to paramilitary forces.”We’re not in good shape,” said Ikhlas Abdallah, a general practitioner who arrived from the western Darfur city now in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces, which have been battling the Sudanese army since April 2023.”But we have to be okay to provide care to those who need it,” she told AFP.She spoke from Al-Dabbah camp, located in army-held territory about 770 kilometres (480 miles) northeast of El-Fasher, which endured an 18-month siege before falling to the RSF last month.”Psychologically, what can we do? Like all those displaced from El-Fasher, our feelings are indescribable.”At the camp, which is funded by a Sudanese businessman, hundreds of families sleep in nylon tents or on plastic mats laid across the sand. In one patch of blue canvas shelters, some 60 doctors, nurses and pharmacists have assembled what passes for a clinic: a makeshift pharmacy, a rudimentary laboratory and tents used as short-stay wards. Plastic chairs serve as examination tables. Ambulances borrowed from the nearby town of Al-Dabbah function as mobile clinics. Men carry buckets of water for the communal kitchens and improvised latrines while women stir massive pots over open flames. They serve the traditional Sudanese dish assida to families for free.”We all come from the same place,” said Elham Mohamed, a pharmacist who also fled El-Fasher.”We understand them and they understand us,” she told AFP.- ‘Death, captivity or ransom’ -Every day, dozens of people arrive with respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, skin conditions and eye infections — ailments that spread quickly in crowded conditions with little clean water.”We are doing everything we can, but resources are scarce,” said Ahmed al-Tegani, a volunteer doctor with the International Organization for Migration.Some patients “require specialised care” that is not available in the camp, he told AFP.Abdallah fled the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El-Fasher after the RSF overran the army’s last stronghold in Darfur on October 26.She said she arrived safely in Al-Dabbah “only because they (the RSF) did not know we were doctors”. To the paramilitary group, she said, identifying as medical personnel meant “death, captivity or ransom”. While escaping, she and her colleagues treated the wounded secretly, often without bandages. “If the RSF discovered someone had received medical care, they beat them again,” she said. Throughout the two-year conflict, both warring sides have repeatedly and deliberately targeted doctors and hospitals.The World Health Organization has documented 285 attacks on healthcare since the war began. They have killed at least 1,204 health workers and patients and wounded more than 400.- ‘No one left to save’ -Before fleeing, Abdallah spent weeks working around the clock in the maternity hospital. It was the last functioning medical facility in El-Fasher and suffered repeated attacks during the siege.In October alone, the WHO reported four attacks on the hospital.Abdallah remembers one night in October when a drone struck the building. “I went home early that evening,” she recalled, “and later I heard the sound of a drone. It fell on the hospital. “When we rushed there, there was no one left to save.” “Bodies were unrecognisable. People were torn into pieces,” she said.”It didn’t feel real. Horror like in the movies.”Two days after El-Fasher fell, an attack on the hospital killed 460 patients and staff, according to the WHO.The city remains cut off from communications, with the RSF controlling access to Starlink satellite services.For Abdallah, the journey to Al-Dabbah — which involved checkpoints, arbitrary killings and rampant looting and sexual violence — was “worse than inside El-Fasher”.Most people “were beaten” and “more people died on the road than” in the city itself. Sudan’s conflict has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 12 million, creating the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.On a recent visit to displacement camps in Sudan, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said the country faced enormous needs and highlighted the need to develop a stronger health system.

Hezbollah held the funeral Monday for its top military chief and other members of the militant group a day after Israel killed them in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.Haytham Ali Tabatabai is the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel since a November 2024 ceasefire sought to end more than a year of hostilities between the two sides.His assassination comes as Israel has escalated its attacks on Lebanon, with the United States increasing pressure on the Beirut government to disarm the Iran-backed Hezbollah.Israel’s military said Sunday it had “eliminated the terrorist Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s chief of general staff”.The group announced the deaths of Tabatabai and four other members in the attack.In Beirut’s southern suburbs, a densely populated area where Hezbollah holds sway, hundreds of supporters joined Monday’s funeral procession for Tabatabai and two of his companions.Hezbollah members in fatigues carried the coffins, draped in the group’s yellow flags, to the sound of religious chants, an AFP correspondent said.The crowd yelled slogans against Israel and America, while supporters carried portraits of the group’s leaders and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Hezbollah said Tabatabai assumed the role of military leader after the most recent war with Israel, which saw the group heavily weakened and senior commanders killed.Israel has carried out near daily strikes on Lebanon despite the truce, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure to prevent the group from rearming.- ‘Very limited’ options -According to the agreement, Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Israel, and to have its military infrastructure there dismantled.Under a government-approved plan, Lebanon’s army is to finish disarming Hezbollah in the area by year end, before tackling the rest of the country.Hezbollah has rejected calls to disarm.After Tabatabai’s killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would “not allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power” and urged Lebanon’s government to “fulfil its commitment to disarm Hezbollah”.A source close to the group told AFP on condition of anonymity there were “two opinions within the group — those who wish to respond to the assassination and those who want to refrain from doing so — but the leadership tends to adopt the utmost forms of diplomacy at the present stage”.Last December, Hezbollah lost a key supply route through Syria with the fall of longtime ruler and ally Bashar al-Assad.Washington is also demanding that Beirut cut off the group’s funding from Iran, which slammed Sunday’s killing as “cowardly”.Atlantic Council researcher Nicholas Blanford told AFP that “Hezbollah’s options are very limited”.”Its support base is clamouring for revenge but if Hezbollah responds directly… Israel will strike back very hard and no one in Lebanon will thank Hezbollah for that,” he said.- Hezbollah defiance -Sunday’s strike was the biggest blow to Hezbollah since the ceasefire “because of (Tabatabai’s) seniority and the fact that it demonstrates the Israelis can still locate and target senior officials despite whatever protective measures Hezbollah is undertaking” since the war, Blanford added.Senior Hezbollah official Ali Damush told the funeral that Tabatabai’s killing aimed “to frighten and weaken (Hezbollah) into retreating… surrendering, and submitting, but this goal will never be achieved”.Israel was “worried about Hezbollah’s possible response — and should remain worried”, he said, urging Lebanese authorities to “confront the aggression by all means… and reject the pressures that seek to push Lebanon to comply with American dictates and Israeli conditions”.Lebanon’s army says it is implementing its plan to disarm Hezbollah, but the United States and Israel have accused Lebanon’s authorities of stalling.Condemning the attack, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Sunday that “the only way to consolidate stability” was through “extending the authority of the state over all its territory with its own forces, and enabling the Lebanese army to carry out its duties”.A Lebanese military official told AFP last week that US and Israeli demands to fully disarm Hezbollah by December 31 were “impossible” considering personnel and equipment shortages, expressing concern at the risk of confrontations with local communities that support the group.

Pope Leo XIV embarks on his debut overseas trip Thursday, travelling to Turkey and Lebanon to promote Christian unity and urge peace efforts amid heightened tensions in the Middle East.The six-day trip is the first major international test for the US pope, who was elected head of the Catholic Church in May and whose understated style contrasts with that of his charismatic and impulsive predecessor, Francis.In Turkey, Leo will celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, where the Creed — a foundational declaration of the Christian faith — was written.While the Chicago-born pontiff’s upcoming visit has so far garnered little attention in the predominantly Muslim country, where Christians represent only 0.2 percent of the 86 million inhabitants, it is eagerly awaited in Lebanon.Lebanon has long been held up as a model of religious coexistence.But since 2019, it has been ravaged by crises, including economic collapse which has caused widespread poverty, a devastating blast at Beirut port in 2020, and the recent war with Israel.”The Lebanese are tired,” said Vincent Gelot, director of the Lebanon and Syria office for l’Oeuvre d’Orient, a Catholic organisation that supports Christians in the Middle East.”They expect a frank word to the Lebanese elite, as well as strong and concrete actions,” he told AFP.- ‘A vicious cycle’ -Preparations are in full swing at the sites the pope will visit, with signs bearing his image and reading “Lebanon wants peace” hung along newly-restored roads.Lebanon’s ambassador to the Holy See, Fadi Assaf, said it was an “exceptional” visit which would “highlight the difficulties facing Lebanon”, which is hoping for a “political and economic breakthrough”.Gelot said the Lebanese are caught in “a vicious cycle of wars and suffering”, “dashed hopes” and “uncertainty about the future”, and they “know full well that (this visit) will not solve all their problems”.It is an opportunity however to highlight the role of private, often religious, organisations in ensuring access to healthcare and education — like the psychiatric hospital run by Franciscan nuns that Leo is set to visit, he said.Trip highlights include a meeting with the country’s youth, an open-air mass expected to draw 100,000 people, and a prayer at the site of the port explosion that killed over 220 people and caused vast damage to the Lebanese capital.Abdo Abou Kassem, the church’s media coordinator for the visit, said the pope also wishes to “reaffirm Lebanon’s role as… a model for both East and West” through an interreligious meeting in downtown Beirut.- Schisms -The visit to Turkey, a strategic crossroad between East and West, is also aimed at promoting the Church’s dialogue with Islam.Leo will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday and visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on Saturday.But at the heart of the trip is the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which Leo was invited to attend by Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity.Catholics recognise the universal authority of the pope as head of the Church, while Orthodox Christians are organised into churches that appoint their own heads.The 325 A.D. meeting in Nicaea predated the schisms that divided Christianity between East and West and the commemoration is an important moment to promote Christian unity.On the shores of Lake Iznik, the current name for Nicaea, the 70-year-old will join dignitaries from various Orthodox churches on Friday for a prayer which his predecessor, who died in April, had originally been set to attend.There will be one notable absence. With the war in Ukraine deepening a rift between the patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople, Russian Patriarch Kirill — a supporter of President Vladimir Putin — was not invited.The pope will be careful not to inflame tensions further by irritating Moscow, which fears the Vatican will strengthen Constantinople’s role as a privileged interlocutor and weaken its influence.