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Israeli troops opened fire in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing 10 residents and a Lebanese soldier, health officials said as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israel to withdraw.Israel was all but certain to miss Sunday’s deadline, which is part of a ceasefire agreement that ended its war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group two months ago.The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period.That period ends on Sunday.Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli forces opened fire on “citizens who were trying to return to their villages”, killing 11 and wounding 83.The ministry’s toll includes a soldier from the Lebanese army, which also announced his death and said Israeli fire had wounded another soldier.AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people, some flying yellow Hezbollah flags, were trying to get to several villages despite the Israeli military’s continued presence.”We will return to our villages and the Israeli enemy will leave,” even if it costs lives, said Ali Harb, a 27-year-old trying to go to Kfar Kila.- Pictures of Nasrallah -Residents could also be seen heading on foot and by motorbike towards the devastated border town of Mays al-Jabal, where Israeli troops are still stationed.Some held up portraits of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, while women dressed in black carried photos of family members killed in the war.Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had issued a message earlier on Sunday to residents of more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon telling them not to return.Speaking from the border town of Aita al-Shaab, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah hailed in a television appearance “the return of residents in spite of the threats and warnings”.Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the former army chief who took office earlier this month after a two-year vacancy in the post, called on residents to keep a cool head and “trust the Lebanese army”, which he said wanted “to ensure your safe return to your homes and villages”.On Saturday, the army had said the delay in implementing the agreement was the “result of the procrastination in the withdrawal from the Israeli enemy’s side”.A joint statement from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission on Sunday acknowledged “that the timelines envisaged in the November Understanding have not been met”. “As seen tragically this morning, conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages along the Blue Line,” the statement said, referring to the border. It urged residents “to exercise caution”.Israeli forces have left coastal areas of southern Lebanon, but are still present in areas further east.The ceasefire deal stipulates that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that the “agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese state”, so the military’s withdrawal would continue beyond the Sunday deadline.The Lebanese army said it was “ready to continue its deployment” as soon as Israel left. Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Sunday for the backers of the ceasefire agreement — a group that includes the United States and France — “to force the Israeli enemy to withdraw”.- Demolitions -Lebanese state media have reported that Israeli forces have carried out demolitions in villages they control.Aoun spoke on Saturday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron about the “need to oblige Israel to respect the terms of the deal”, adding it must “end its successive violations, including the destruction of border villages”.Macron’s office said the French president had called on all parties to the ceasefire to honour their commitments as soon as possible.The fragile truce has generally held, even as the warring sides have repeatedly traded accusations of violations.The deal ended two months of full-scale war that had followed nearly a year of low-intensity exchanges.Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire with the Israeli army the day after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.Israel’s campaign delivered a series of devastating blows against Hezbollah’s leadership including its longtime chief Nasrallah.

Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad reacted with defiance on Sunday to a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, as a fragile truce aimed at permanently ending the war entered its second week.There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s “great” idea.Meanwhile, a dispute linked to the latest hostage-prisoner swap under the truce deal led to vast crowds of Palestinians jamming a coastal road after they were blocked from returning to the territory’s north.The swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday to joyful scenes, in the second such exchange so far.After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory. “I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.”You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”. – ‘Deplorable’ -Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects”, as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.Gazans, he said, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by US President Trump.”Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said it encouraged “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.But far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the Gaza truce deal, said Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea”.He added: “Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security.”Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.The United Nations says close to 70 percent of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.- Waiting to enter -On Sunday, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.Aerial footage showed the crowd stretching hundreds of metres in three directions, with Gaza’s civil defence agency saying “tens of thousands” were waiting in the area to go north.Israel announced on Saturday it would prevent Palestinians’ passage to the north until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage who Netanyahu’s office said “was supposed to be released”.On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said that by not releasing her on Saturday Hamas had committed a truce violation. It said they had also violated the deal by not providing a “detailed list of all hostages’ statuses”, the office said.Hamas later said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the health ministry and army on Sunday said Israeli troops killed three residents and a Lebanese soldier as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from the area.During the first phase of the Gaza truce, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases over six weeks in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 87 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,283 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.burs-ami/it/smw

Sudan’s army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the building, which had been encircled by paramilitary fighters since the war erupted in April 2023.”Our forces are in their best condition,” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told army commanders at the reclaimed headquarters close to the city centre and airport.The army’s recapture of the General Command building is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the Nile’s west bank, nearly a year ago.In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters.Since the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began, RSF had encircled both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command of the Armed Forces just south across the Blue Nile river.On Friday the army said it had broken the siege on Signal Corps, later reporting it had also retaken its headquarters.Since the early days of the war, when the RSF quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military had to supply its forces inside the headquarters via airdrops.Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months, before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.Two weeks ago, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.- ‘The best medicine is peace’ -The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.Late last year, then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said people had been forced to eat grass and peanut shells to survive in parts of the country.Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, accusing his group of committing genocide.A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.Across the country, up to 80 percent of healthcare facilities have been forced out of service, according to official figures.A deadly attack late Friday on the main hospital in El-Fasher, a besieged town in western Sudan, killed 70 people and injured 19 others, the World Health Organisation said on Sunday.”At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.In a rare statement addressing the targeting of healthcare in Sudan, Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack as a “violation of international law and international humanitarian law”.AFP could not independently verify which of Sudan’s warring sides had launched the attack.However, local activists reported that the hospital was hit by a drone after the RSF issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the city in advance of an expected offensive.The WHO chief said that another facility in North Darfur’s Al-Malha, just north of El-Fasher, had also been attacked in recent days.”We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” Ghebreyesus said.”Above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace,” he added.

Sudan’s army chief visited on Sunday his headquarters in the capital Khartoum, two days after forces recaptured the building which had been encircled by paramilitary fighters since the war erupted in April 2023.”Our forces are in their best condition,” Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told army commanders at the reclaimed headquarters, which are close to the city centre and airport.The army’s recapture of the General Command building is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the Nile’s west bank, nearly a year ago.In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters.Since war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began, RSF had encircled both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command of the Armed Forces just south across the Blue Nile river.On Friday it said it had broken the siege on Signal Corps, and later said it had also retaken its headquarters.Since the early days of the war, when the RSF quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military had to supply its forces inside the headquarters via airdrops.Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months, before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.Two weeks ago, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.The war in Sudan has unleased a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.Late last year, then United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said people are forced to eat grass and peanut shells to survive in parts of the country.

Israeli troops fired at residents of south Lebanon on Sunday, killing two and wounding 32, health officials said, as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from the area.Israel was all but certain to miss Sunday’s deadline, which is part of a ceasefire agreement that ended its war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group two months ago.The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period.That period ends on Sunday.Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli forces had opened fire in at least two border towns on “citizens who were trying to return to their villages”, killing two and wounding 32.The ministry had previously said the “aggression” had centred on the two villages of Houla and Kfar Kila.Earlier, Lebanon’s official National News Agency had reported that Israeli fire wounded several people in Kfar Kila “who crossed the barrier and checkpoint put in place by the occupation army”, referring to Israel.Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee issued a message earlier on Sunday to residents of more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon, including Kfar Kila and Houla, telling them not to return.AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people were trying to return to several villages despite the military’s continued presence.AFPTV live images from Kfar Kila showed crowds gathered, some with yellow Hezbollah flags, near Lebanese security vehicles that blocked a road near a petrol station.Beyond them sat another military vehicle on an empty stretch of the road.On Saturday, the Lebanese army said a delay in implementing the agreement was the “result of the procrastination in the withdrawal from the Israeli enemy’s side”.Israeli forces have left coastal areas of southern Lebanon, but are still present in areas further east.The ceasefire deal stipulates that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that “the ceasefire agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese state”, so the military’s withdrawal would continue beyond the Sunday deadline.”The withdrawal process is conditional upon the Lebanese army deploying in southern Lebanon and fully and effectively enforcing the agreement, with Hezbollah withdrawing beyond the Litani River,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.It added that “the gradual withdrawal process will continue in full coordination with the United States”, a key ally and one of the monitors of the ceasefire.The Lebanese army said it was “ready to continue its deployment as soon as the Israeli enemy withdraws”.- ‘Scorched earth’ -Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayad said on Saturday that Israel’s “excuses” were a pretext to “pursue a scorched earth policy” in border areas that would make the return of displaced residents impossible.Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who took office earlier this month, spoke on Saturday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, whose government is also involved in overseeing the truce.According to a statement from his office, Aoun spoke of the “need to oblige Israel to respect the terms of the deal in order to maintain stability in the south”.Aoun also said Israel must “end its successive violations, including the destruction of border villages… which would prevent the return of residents”.Macron’s office, in its summary of the conversation, said the French president had called on all parties to the ceasefire to honour their commitments as soon as possible.On January 17, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for Israel to end its military operations and “occupation” in the south.The fragile ceasefire has generally held, even as the warring sides have repeatedly traded accusations of violating it.The Israeli military has continued to carry out frequent strikes that it says targeted Hezbollah fighters, and Lebanese state media has reported that Israeli forces were carrying out demolitions in villages they control.The November 27 deal ended two months of full-scale war that had followed months of low-intensity exchanges.Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire with the Israeli army the day after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.Israel intensified its campaign against Hezbollah in September, launching a series of devastating blows against the group’s leadership and killing its longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah.Hezbollah warned on Thursday that “any violation of the 60-day deadline will be considered a flagrant violation” of the ceasefire agreement and “an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty”.The group refrained from any threat to resume attacks on Israel but said the Lebanese state should use “all means necessary… to restore the land and wrest it from the clutches of the occupation”.

US President Donald Trump floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory, as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending the war enters its second week on Sunday.The truce deal that came into effect on January 19 saw four Israeli hostages and around 200 Palestinian prisoners released to joyful scenes on Saturday, in the second such exchange so far.But after 15 months of war, Trump called Gaza a “demolition site” and said he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory. “I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.”You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million, adding that “something has to happen”. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term”. The vast majority of Gaza’s people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the Gaza war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.Trump’s new administration has promised “unwavering support” for Israel, without yet laying out details of its Middle East policy.He confirmed Saturday he had ordered the Pentagon to release a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs for Israel which was blocked by his predecessor Joe Biden.- ‘We miss our homes’ -While Israel and militant group Hamas completed their second hostage-prisoner swap under the ceasefire deal on Saturday, a last-minute dispute blocked the expected return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to the Gaza Strip’s devastated north.Israel announced it would block Palestinians’ passage to the north until a civilian woman hostage who the prime minister’s office said “was supposed to be released” on Saturday walks free.A Hamas source told AFP that the woman, Arbel Yehud, will be “released as part of the third swap set for next Saturday”.After a 42-day initial phase, the deal’s second phase is to see negotiations for a permanent end to the war, but analysts have warned it risks collapsing because of the deal’s multi-phase nature and deep distrust between Israel and Hamas.During the first phase, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.A total of seven hostages and 289 Palestinians have so far been released under the deal, as well as one Jordanian prisoner freed by Israel.In Gaza, Palestinian police prevented hundreds of displaced people from reaching the Israeli-controlled passage to the north, where Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles were blocking the road.Rafiqa Subh, waiting to return to Beit Lahia, said: “We want to go back, even though our houses are destroyed. We miss our homes so much.”The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said Gazans were not allowed to approach the Netzarim Corridor, through which they have to pass to reach their homes in the north, “until it is announced open”.”These instructions will remain in effect” until further notice and until “Hamas fulfils its commitments”, Adraee said.The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel, medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.- ‘Until the last hostage’ – The four hostages released on Saturday, all women soldiers, were reunited with their families and taken to hospital, where a doctor said they were in a stable condition.Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which triggered the war, 87 remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.Some Israelis fear for the fate of the remaining hostages as far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition oppose the ceasefire.Hours after Saturday’s hostage release was completed, thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, as they have done weekly throughout the war, to pressure the authorities to secure the release of more hostages.An AFP correspondent said the demonstrators chanted in support of the return of all remaining hostages, including those not slated for release during the first phase of the truce.”The families cannot breathe. We are under immense stress… We will do everything, we will fight until the end, until the last hostage” returns, said Ifat Kalderon, whose cousin Ofer Kalderon is still held in Gaza.Efrat Machikava, niece of hostage Gadi Mozes, said that “our hearts are filled with joy for the four hostages who returned to us today, but we are extremely concerned for our loved ones still held in terrorist captivity.”The October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,283 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.burs-ami/it/