Beirut has received "assurances" that Israel will not target the country's only international airport, Lebanon's transport minister told AFP, but said those fell short of guarantees.

Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon including Beirut's southern suburbs, adjacent to the airport.

On Monday, the United States warned Israel not to attack the Beirut airport or the roads leading to it, after repeated Israeli strikes near the facility.

A billion-dollar binge which brought some of football's biggest names to Saudi Arabia's modest league has given way to a more cautious phase, with spending down dramatically this year.

After a jaw-dropping 2023, when Cristiano Ronaldo led a parade of largely ageing superstars to the oil-rich, conservative monarchy, Saudi transfer spending slumped from $957 million to $431 million in the latest window.

Piles of fishing nets lay on land unused in the southern Lebanese port of Sidon on Tuesday as fishermen stayed ashore after the Israeli military warned of strikes against militants along the coast.

Commercial vessels and leisure boats were anchored in the harbour, while the city's ancient fish market fell unusually quiet, with traders trying to peddle the catch from earlier in the week.

"The Lebanese army told us we weren't allowed to go out, and we're respecting that," said Mohammed Bidawi, a member of the local fishermen's union.

Ask a Lebanese person how they are, and you're likely to be met with a heavy pause or a pained smile. Years of crisis have drained them, and now Israeli air strikes are pushing many to breaking point.

Cartoonist Bernard Hage, who draws under the name Art of Boo, summed it up a few weeks ago with a layer cake.

These layers are "Financial Collapse", "Pandemic", the 2020 "Beirut Port Explosion", "Political Deadlock" and "Mass Depression".

"War" is now the cherry on top.

Carine Nakhle, a supervisor at suicide helpline Embrace, says the trauma is never-ending.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said Tuesday the militant group supported Lebanese efforts for a ceasefire with Israel, after two weeks of heavy Israeli strikes that killed its leader.

"We support the political efforts that (Lebanese Parliament Speaker) Nabih Berri is undertaking towards a ceasefire," Qassem said in a televised speech.

After nearly a year of cross-border clashes, Israel intensified its bombing campaign on September 23, killing more than 1,150 people and displacing over a million since, according to official figures.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon Tuesday it could face destruction "like Gaza" as Israel ramps up its ground offensive against Hezbollah along the southern section of the Lebanese coast.

Netanyahu's stark warning came as the Israeli military deployed more troops and urged civilians in coastal areas to evacuate.

"You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza," Netanyahu said in a video address directed to the people of Lebanon.

A war monitor said four people were killed in an Israeli air strike on Tuesday targeting a building in the Syrian capital used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

"Israel targeted a building frequented by senior Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah operatives, as well as a car parked in front of the building... killing four people," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israel's bombardment of Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold has forced tens of thousands to flee to the city centre, but many in sectarian Lebanon view the newcomers with suspicion, worried they too might become targets.

For weeks, Israeli strikes have widened in pursuit of Hezbollah members, leading many Lebanese to shun civilians from the same religious community as the Iran-backed group.

Jila Mossaed fled Iran for Sweden in 1986, a 38-year-old poet who spoke no Swedish. Three decades later, she became the first foreigner inducted into Sweden's highest language authority, the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Now she writes in Farsi and Swedish, but Mossaed struggled for years to learn Swedish and still stumbles over pronunciation, she told AFP in the halls of the Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III to promote the Swedish language and literature.

Kais Saied, who has been re-elected president of Tunisia, was first elected democratically in 2019 before staging a power grab in 2021.

He sees himself as a man on a divine mission, but critics see him as ushering in a new authoritarian regime.

Clean-shaven, with an unwaveringly upright and slender figure, Saied has a stiff demeanour.

He gives very few media interviews, and limits his public comments to monologues in videos published on Facebook in which he speaks in stern classical Arabic, at times with perceptible anger.