UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday denounced attacks that have injured several peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, his spokesman said, as Israeli forces move against Hezbollah militants.
"UNIFIL personnel and its premises must never be targeted," Stephane Dujarric said, referring to the blue-helmeted international force. "Attacks against peacekeepers are in breach of international law...(and) may constitute a war crime."
The Iraqi government is struggling to rein in powerful pro-Iran factions that risk pulling Iraq into a regional war, as fighting in Gaza and Lebanon threatens to spread further.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of armed groups backed by Iran, has claimed several drone attacks targeting Israel in recent months, which they say are in support of their Palestinian ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
While most of the attacks have been intercepted, a drone strike last week that Israel said was launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers.
Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza, where Israel is battling Hamas, are grieving for loved ones lost to the relentless bombardment while also facing food shortages and a medical crisis.
Hospitals are running out of supplies and emergency responders are often unable to reach people trapped under debris.
"The number of dead is high, and people are under the rubble, missing," Muhammad Abu Halima, a 40-year-old Jabalia resident, told AFP.
"For over a week there has been no hope, no water and no means of life," he said.
Rubble and plumes of smoke were all that was left Sunday of Nabatiyeh marketplace, once the beating heart of the city in south Lebanon where Israel has intensified its bombardment.
Late Saturday, state media reported Israeli air strikes on the marketplace of the major city some dozen kilometres (miles) from the border with Israel.
The health ministry said the attack wounded eight people. Israel's military has not commented.
"It's as if an earthquake shook the Nabatiyeh market. It's been completely destroyed," said resident Tarek Sadaka.
A Sudanese network of volunteer rescuers said on Sunday the military carried out an air strike a day earlier on a marketplace in Khartoum, leaving 23 people dead.
The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the UN chief on Sunday to move peacekeepers deployed in south Lebanon out of "harm's way", saying Hezbollah was using them as "human shields".
His call to UN chief Antonio Guterres came a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) repeated its refusal to withdraw from the border area after five of its members were wounded in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Iran held a series of diplomatic talks on Sunday, with President Masoud Pezeshkian seeking support from France's Emmanuel Macron for a ceasefire in Lebanon, and the foreign minister visiting Iraq while on a regional tour.
According to a statement on Iran's presidential website, Pezeshkian and Macron discussed ways to secure a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel as the Iranian leader condemned Israel's "crimes" in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel's military said a Hezbollah drone killed four soldiers at one of its northern bases Sunday, as it expanded its bombardments of Lebanon and troops battled militants across the border.
The attack on a military training camp in Binyamina, near Haifa, was the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded.
Forty nations that contribute to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Saturday that they "strongly condemn recent attacks" on the peacekeepers.
"Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated," said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.
Other signatories include Ghana, Nepal, Malaysia, Spain, France and China -- all countries that have contributed several hundred troops to the force.
The prestigious Bayeux War Correspondents' Awards on Saturday honoured reporters from Agence France-Presse, the BBC and others documenting conflict and strife around the world.
AFP photographer Mahmud Hams won the top prize for photos including his harrowing image of a woman crying during a search for victims after an Israeli strike on Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on October 17, 2023.
The picture was captured just days after the Gaza war erupted after the attack by Hamas militants against Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people.
