BEIRUT/GAZA: 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 the Zionist entity. Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has traded near-daily fire with Zionist forces since the Gaza war broke out in October, announced its fighters had fired a new barrage of rockets at the Zionist entity’s north overnight into Sunday.

Zionist bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued, witnesses and officials in the territory said, almost 10 months into the war. Gaza health officials said at least 44 Palestinians were killed on Sunday, the day after a round of talks in Cairo ended without result. The civil defense agency said a Zionist strike hit two Gaza City schools - Hassan Salama and Al-Nasser - housing displaced people in the territory’s north on Sunday, killing at least 30 people.

Footage showed bodies scattered inside the yard of one of two blast-wrecked schools as residents rushed to carry casualties, including children, and loaded them into ambulance vehicles that took them to at least two nearby hospitals. This brings to at least 11 the number of schools hit in Gaza since July 6. The Zionist military has killed at least 39,583 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, mostly women and children.

The Zionist military earlier said its air forces had struck around 50 militant targets throughout Gaza in the previous 24 hours. The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies were pulled from a residential building after a Zionist air strike in north Gaza. Medics at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza said at least five people were killed in a Zionist drone strike on tents housing displaced Palestinians at the medical complex.

The hospital compound is in Deir Al-Balah, an area crowded with thousands of people displaced by fighting in other parts of the enclave. The government media office said the Zionist entity had struck 172 designated shelters, mostly schools, housing thousands of displaced families since Oct 7.

Elsewhere in Deir Al-Balah, three Palestinians were killed when a Zionist missile struck a house. Separate Zionist strikes killed eight others inside their home in Jabalia camp in northern Gaza City and three inside a car. Residents in areas southeast of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis and to the north of Rafah, where there was heavy fighting last month, reported receiving evacuation orders from the Zionist military.

With the Zionist entity on high alert anticipating major military action from Iran-backed Hezbollah and others, Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “If they dare to attack us, they will pay a heavy price.” Near the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, medics and police said two people were killed on Sunday in a stabbing attack.

The assailant, a Palestinian from the Zionist-occupied West Bank, was “neutralized” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Saud Arabia joined France, Canada and Jordan in calling on their citizens to leave Lebanon. “In a highly volatile security context”, French nationals were “urgently asked” to avoid traveling to Lebanon, and those already in the country should leave “as soon as possible”, the foreign ministry in Paris said. The United States and Britain have issued similar warnings.

France on Sunday also urged its nationals living in Iran to “temporarily leave”, warning Iranian airspace and airports could close. Several Western airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon and other airports in the region. On Sunday Qatar Airways said the Doha-Beirut route would “operate exclusively during daylight hours” at least until Monday.

Wednesday’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Zionist killing of Hezbollah’s military chief in Beirut, has triggered vows of vengeance from Iran and the “axis of resistance” of Tehran-backed armed groups. Haniyeh was Hamas’ 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.

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 the Zionist entity and no longer be confined to military targets. The Zionist entity’s ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region. US President Joe Biden, asked by reporters if he thought Iran would stand down, said: “I hope so. I don’t know.”

In an interview with ABC News, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said the United States was “doing everything possible to make sure that this situation does not boil over”. As part of those efforts it is “so urgent” that a Gaza ceasefire deal be reached, Finer said. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi made a rare visit to Tehran where he met Iran’s acting top diplomat Ali Bagheri for “consultations”, local media reported.

Haniyeh’s killing “has brought the Middle East to its moment of greatest peril in years”, the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said in a report. The potential for a miscalculation that would trigger a war “without constraints... is likely greater now than it was in April”, it added. On April 13, Iran fired a barrage of drones and missiles at the Zionist entity — most of which were intercepted — after a deadly strike on 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 the Zionist entity have accused Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war. On Sunday, Netanyahu told his cabinet he was “making every effort” to return the captives and was prepared “to go a long way” to do so. – Agencies