Editor’s Note: Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Globally, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have contact information for crisis centers around the world.

Advocacy groups behind a so-called suicide capsule said Sunday they have suspended the process of taking applications to use it — which numbered over 370 last month — as a criminal investigation into its first use in Switzerland is completed.

The president of Switzerland-based The Last Resort, Florian Willet, is being held in pretrial detention, said the group and Exit International, an affiliate founded in Australia over a quarter century ago.

Swiss police arrested Willet and several other people following the death of an unidentified 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest who on Sept. 23 became the first person to use the device, known as the “Sarco,” in a forest in the northern Schaffhausen region near the German border.

Others initially detained were released from custody, authorities have said.

Switzerland has some of the most permissive laws in the world when it comes to assisted suicide, though the first use of the Sarco has prompted a debate among lawmakers.

Laws in the rich Alpine country permit assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive.”

The advocacy groups said in a statement Sunday that 371 people were “in the process of applying” to use the Sarco in Switzerland as of Sept. 23 and applications were suspended after its first use.

Exit International, whose founder Dr. Philip Nitschke is based in the Netherlands, is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.

The Sarco capsule is designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas from a tank underneath into the sealed chamber, allowing the person to fall asleep and then die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Exit International has said Willet was the only person present at the woman’s death, and described it as “peaceful, fast and dignified.” Those claims could not be independently verified.

On the same day as the woman died, Swiss Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told parliament that use of the Sarco would not be legal. The woman was said to be severely immunocompromised.

Exit says its lawyers in Switzerland believe use of the device is legal.

“Only after the Sarco was used was it learned that Ms. Baume-Schneider had addressed the issue,” the advocacy groups said in the statement Sunday. “The timing was a pure coincidence and not our intention.”

Tunisians voted Sunday in an election expected to grant President Kais Saied a second term, as his most prominent detractors, including one of the candidates challenging him, are in prison.

The 66-year-old president faces few obstacles to winning reelection, five years after riding anti-establishment backlash to a first term, and three after suspending parliament and rewriting the constitution giving the presidency more power.

The North African country’s election is its third since protests led to the 2011 ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — the first autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring uprisings that also overthrew leaders in Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

International observers praised the previous two contests as meeting democratic norms. However, a raft of arrests and actions taken by a Saied-appointed election authority have raised questions about whether this year’s race is free and fair. And opposition parties have called for a boycott.

What’s at stake?

Not long ago, Tunisia was hailed as the Arab Spring’s only success story. As coups, counterrevolutions and civil wars convulsed the region, the North African nation enshrined a new democratic constitution and saw its leading civil society groups win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.

But its new leaders were unable to buoy its struggling economy and were plagued by political infighting and episodes of violence and terrorism.

Amid that backdrop, Saied, then 61 and a political outsider, won his first term in 2019. He advanced to a runoff promising to usher in a “New Tunisia” and hand more power to young people and local governments.

This year’s election will offer a window into popular opinion about the trajectory that Tunisia’s fading democracy has taken since Saied took office.

Saied’s supporters appear to have remained loyal to him and his promise to transform Tunisia. But he isn’t affiliated with any political party, and it’s unclear just how deep his support runs among Tunisians.

It’s the first presidential race since Saied upended the country’s politics in July 2021, declaring a state of emergency, sacking his prime minister, suspending the parliament and rewriting Tunisia’s constitution consolidating his own power.

Those actions outraged pro-democracy groups and leading opposition parties, who called them a coup. Yet despite anger from career politicians, voters approved Saied’s new constitution the following year in a low-turnout referendum.

Authorities subsequently began arresting Saied’s critics including journalists, lawyers, politicians and civil society figures, charging them with endangering state security and violating a controversial anti-fake news law that observers argue stifles dissent.

Fewer voters turned out to participate in parliamentary and local elections in 2022 and 2023 amid economic woes and widespread political apathy.

Who’s running?

Many wanted to challenge Saied, but few were able to.

Seventeen potential candidates filed paperwork to run and Tunisia’s election authority approved only three: Saied, Zouhair Maghzaoui and Ayachi Zammel.

Maghzaoui is a veteran politician who has campaigned against Saied’s economic program and recent political arrests. Still, he is loathed by opposition parties for backing Saied’s constitution and earlier moves to consolidate power.

Zammel is a businessman supported by politicians not boycotting the race. During the campaign, he has been sentenced to prison time in four voter fraud cases related to signatures his team gathered to qualify for the ballot.

Others had hoped to run but were prevented. The election authority, known as ISIE, last month dismissed a court ruling ordering it to reinstate three additional challengers.

With many arrested, detained or convicted on charges related to their political activities, Tunisia’s most well-known opposition figures are also not participating.

That includes the 83-year-old leader of Tunisia’s most well organized political party Ennahda, which rose to power after the Arab Spring. Rached Ghannouchi, the Islamist party’s co-founder and Tunisia’s former house speaker, has been imprisoned since last year after criticizing Saied.

The crackdown also includes one of Ghannouchi’s most vocal detractors: Abir Moussi, a right-wing lawmaker known for railing against Islamists and speaking nostalgically for pre-Arab Spring Tunisia. The 49-year-old president of the Free Destourian Party also was imprisoned last year after criticizing Saied.

Other less known politicians who announced plans to run have also since been jailed or sentenced on similar charges.

Opposition groups have called to boycott the race. The National Salvation Front — a coalition of secular and Islamist parties including Ennahda — has denounced the process as a sham and questioned the election’s legitimacy.

What are the other issues?

The country’s economy continues to face major challenges. Despite Saied’s promises to chart a new course for Tunisia, unemployment has steadily increased to one of the region’s highest at 16%, with young Tunisians hit particularly hard.

Growth has been slow since the COVID-19 pandemic and Tunisia has remained reliant on multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and the European Union. Today, Tunisia owes them more than $9 billion. Apart from agricultural reform, Saied’s overarching economic strategy is unclear.

Negotiations have long been stalled over a $1.9 billion bailout package offered by the International Monetary Fund in 2022. Saied has been unwilling to accept its conditions, which include restructuring indebted state-owned companies and cutting public wages. Some of the IMF’s stipulations — including lifting subsidies for electricity, flour and fuel — would likely be unpopular among Tunisians who rely on their low costs.

Economic analysts say that foreign and local investors are reluctant to invest in Tunisia due to continued political risks and an absence of reassurances.

The dire economic straits have had a two-pronged effect on one of Tunisia’s key political issues: migration. From 2019 to 2023, an increasing number of Tunisians attempted to migrate to Europe without authorization. Meanwhile, Saied’s administration has taken a harsh approach against migrants arriving from sub-Saharan Africa, many who have found themselves stuck in Tunisia while trying to reach Europe.

Saied energized his supporters in early 2023 by accusing migrants of violence and crime and portraying them as part of a plot to change the country’s demography. The anti-migrant rhetoric prompted extreme violence against migrants and a crackdown from authorities. Last year, security forces targeted migrant communities from the coast to the capital with a series of arrests, deportation to the desert and the demolition of tent camps in Tunis and coastal towns.

Bodies continue to wash ashore on Tunisia’s coastline as boats carrying Tunisians and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa manage only to make it a few nautical miles before sinking.

What does it mean overseas?

Tunisia has maintained ties with its traditional Western allies but also forged new partnerships under Saied.

Much like many populist leaders who’ve taken power worldwide, Saied emphasizes sovereignty and freeing Tunisia from what he calls “foreign diktats.” He has insisted that Tunisia won’t become a “border guard” for Europe, which has sought agreements with him to better police the Mediterranean.

Tunisia and Iran lifted visa requirements and in May announced plans to boost trade ties. It has also accepted millions in loans as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build hospitals, stadiums and ports. While election monitoring organizations have not been granted permission to observe the race, Russia sent observers.

Yet European countries remain Tunisia’s top trade partners and their leaders have maintained productive ties with Saied, hailing agreements to manage migration as a “model” for the region.

Saied has spoken ardently in support of Palestinians as war has swept the Middle East and opposes moves made to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel.

Pope Francis has chosen 21 new cardinals in a move that once again shows his determination to reshape the group of churchmen who will elect his successor.

Francis, 87, made the surprise announcement after commenting on the spiraling conflict in the Middle East and recalling the anniversary of the October 7 attacks on Israel.

Among the new list is the Archbishop of Tehran Dominique Mathieu, a Belgian missionary, with the pope’s decision to choose a cardinal in Iran likely part of Francis’ desire to push for dialogue with Islam and peace in the Middle East.

“I appeal to the international community to end the spiral of revenge and not to repeat attacks, like the one carried out by Iran a few days ago, which can plunge that region into an even bigger war,” the pope said before his announcement of new cardinals.

“All nations have the right to exist in peace and security, and their territories must not be attacked or invaded, sovereignty must be respected and guaranteed by dialogue and peace, not hatred and war.”

Francis also chose a Ukrainian bishop, Mykola Bychok, who at 44 will become the youngest cardinal: he is based in Australia where he ministers to members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community across Oceania.

During his pontificate, Francis has overhauled the composition of the body that will elect his successor, making it more representative of the worldwide church. He has thrown out the old, unwritten rulebook that bishops of certain dioceses (several of them in Italy) would automatically be made cardinals, and instead has given out “red hats” to the peripheries.

Also among the new cardinals announced by the pope on Sunday are bishops from Indonesia, Algeria, Japan and the Ivory Coast. The cardinals will be formally installed by Francis on December 8 with the archbishop of Toronto, Frank Leo, and a British theologian, friar Timothy Radcliffe, also among them.

Only cardinals under the age of 80 are allowed to vote in a papal election, although all cardinals, regardless of their age, can take part in the crucial pre-conclave meetings where the profile of a future pope is discussed. With his latest move, Francis has now chosen most of the men who will elect his successor.

At the time of the pope’s announcement, there were 122 cardinals under 80 and able to vote in a future conclave. Church law technically limits the number of such cardinals to 120, but previous popes have also gone over that number.

Cardinals are second only to the pope in the church hierarchy, hold senior positions in the Vatican and act as the pope’s main advisers. Francis has repeatedly told the cardinals that they must see their role as an opportunity to serve, rather than act like “princes.” Cardinals wear the red scarlet robes to symbolize their willingness to shed their blood for the Catholic faith.

In his speech, the pope also recalled the imminent anniversary of the October 7 attacks, calling for the “immediate release” of hostages in Gaza and lamenting that the Middle East has been “plunged into increasing suffering, with destructive military actions that continue to affect the Palestinian population.” He called for a “ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon.”

Israel’s military says it has encircled Jabalya, northern Gaza and launched a new ground operation, after seeing signs of Hamas rebuilding, despite nearly a year of fighting and strikes in the territory.

Despite attention shifting to Lebanon after Israeli forces escalated their attacks on the Hezbollah militant group, Israel continues to operate across Gaza and is again focusing on an area it previously said was rid of Hamas.

Elsewhere in Gaza, at least 25 people are confirmed dead after Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school in the center of the territory, hospital officials say. Israel said Hamas was embedded in both buildings.

Israel carried out airstrikes overnight Saturday into Sunday in northern Gaza including against what the military said were “weapons storage facilities, underground infrastructure sites, terrorist cells, and additional military infrastructure sites.”

In a statement, the military said it had detected the presence of Hamas members there, as well as efforts by them “to rebuild its operational capabilities in the area,” and was moving forward with the operation to “dismantle.”

Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was engaged in “fierce fights” with Israeli forces in northern Gaza.

Dozens of families in the area have packed up their belongings and fled once again after warnings from the Israeli military of the fresh ground operation in Jabalya, which is home to Gaza’s biggest refugee camp.

The Israeli military issued a fresh evacuation order for residents in northern Gaza, adding it had expanded the scope of the “humanitarian area” in Al-Mawasi.

“We heard the sounds of explosions all night long as if the war started today,” Asaf said

Some residents of northern Gaza are refusing to move, saying there is no safe place left in the enclave.

Jabalya is home to Palestinians who have been displaced multiple times during the Israel-Gaza conflict. The camp has already been targeted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) several times during the war.

In the separate incident in southern Gaza, a mosque was targeted by Israeli forces early Sunday, killing at least 21 people, while another strike on a school killed four people, hospital officials said,

“The mosque was a shelter for displaced people, there are no militants or anything inside,” said Nabil Nadda, who was nearby when the strike happened. “Just people who have no shelter, tents, or homes so they sheltered in the mosque.”

The Israeli military confirmed it carrying out strikes on both sites, calling them “precise” and said were targeting Hamas “command and control” centers.

The renewed fighting comes on the eve of the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, which saw Hamas kill around 1,200 people in Israel and seize more than 250 hostages.

The Israeli offensive that followed in Gaza – which Israel says is aimed at destroying Hamas – has killed more than 41,000 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

Scorch marks and bullet holes scar the battered walls of the Haran family home in kibbutz Be’eri. Its tiled roof has caved in, windows smashed, littering the floors with sharp shards of terracotta and glass – the debris, still untouched, of a day of horror for Israel.

“This house tells the story of Be’eri,” says Yarden Tzemach, a farmer and surviving resident of the kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near Gaza that was overrun by Hamas militants last year.

“In this house, people were murdered. A family, including three children, were kidnapped from here,” he says.

Outside, beneath the fruit trees in the back yard, a toddler’s ride-on toy car, adorned with stickers of Winnie the Pooh, sits amid the rubble, a stark reminder of the lives shattered here.

In some neighborhoods of Be’eri, barely a building was left intact. More than 100 of its 1,100 residents were killed and another 30 abducted to Gaza on October 7.

Home after home was burned out or reduced to rubble and – a year on – many remain as poignant monuments to an ongoing trauma. At least 10 residents of the kibbutz, all friends and neighbors of each other, are among the more than 100 Israelis believed to still be held hostage.

Progress on a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas has repeatedly fallen apart to the anger and despair of hostage families.

‘Best recovery is coming home

In the main administration building of Be’eri, two large aerial photographs hang side by side near the entrance. One is an image of the kibbutz from April 2023, showing ordered rows of neat, white buildings set in lush gardens. The other, taken just after the October 7 attack, shows the same homes blackened and destroyed in the militants’ rampage.

“They killed my sister over there,” says Amit Solvy, pointing to a house on the map, five rows in from the fence that runs around the kibbutz.

Elsewhere in the administration building, two posters are taped in a window – one showing the names and faces of the kibbutz residents who were killed, and another listing those who are held hostage.

Solvy, the Be’eri finance chairman, himself an Israeli veteran of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, is one of nearly 100 residents to have so far returned. Despite his personal loss, he came back to his house three months ago and is now helping lead efforts to bring kibbutz Be’eri, formerly a self-sustaining farming community, back to life.

“I said to all the people that the best recovery is coming home. This is the best emotional recovery, in my opinion,” says Solvy.

But he acknowledges not everyone feels the same, estimating that up to 15% of the surviving residents of Be’eri may never return because of the trauma and the memories of October 7.

And many of those who want to come back, he says, are unable to do so until the extensive damage has been repaired and homes rebuilt – a massive renovation project that means it will be at least 2 years, according to Solvy, before the majority of residents can return home.

“There is no infrastructure for kids, there are no schools, so people with families cannot come back yet,” he explains.

‘There were terrorists in my house’

Work on the physical scars has already begun, with heavy machinery breaking ground on a new neighborhood of Be’eri. New homes, untouched by the October 7 attack, are seen as an essential means of attracting the majority of the residents back.

Ayelet Hakim, her husband and their son, 12, and daughter, 5, live alongside many other Be’eri survivors in government-supplied temporary housing in another kibbutz, Hatzerim, an hour’s drive from the horrifying memories of what was their home.

“I sat in my safe room there for hours and hours not knowing what was going on, and feeling my life being threatened, my kid’s life being threatened, because there were terrorists in my house,” she adds.

Her son, Yehonatan, interrupts. “I want to go back to Be’eri, back to the house that I was living in. I don’t care about the trauma,” he pleads.

“The house, no. The kibbutz, yes,” asserts Ayelet.

“Kibbutz Be’eri has been my home for the past 56 years. That’s where I want to live,” she says.

But after so much death and destruction in Be’eri, a community so close to Gaza, much must also be done to reassure residents they’ll be safe.

In July, an Israel Defense Forces internal investigation into the events of October 7 concluded that the Israeli military had “failed in its mission to protect the residents” and was ill-prepared for the mass Hamas attack.

“I believe it will be possible. But it will be a big challenge and will take a long time for people to feel as safe as they felt before October 7,” says Tzemach, back at the ruins of his Be’eri neighborhood.

“You know, once something happens, you always have in the back of your mind that it can happen again.”

Glance up while strolling through parts of downtown Hong Kong and, chances are, you’ll notice the glassy black lens of a surveillance camera trained on the city’s crowded streets.

And that sight will become more common in the coming years, as the city’s police pursue an ambitious campaign to install thousands of cameras to elevate their surveillance capabilities.

Though it consistently ranks among the world’s safest big cities, police in the Asian financial hub say the new cameras are needed to fight crime – and have raised the possibility of equipping them with powerful facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools.

That’s sparked alarm among some experts who see it as taking Hong Kong one step closer to the pervasive surveillance systems of mainland China, warning of the technology’s repressive potential.

Hong Kong police had previously set a target of installing 2,000 new surveillance cameras this year, and potentially more than that each subsequent year. The force plans to eventually introduce facial recognition to these cameras, security chief Chris Tang told local media in July – adding that police could use AI in the future to track down suspects.

Tang and the Hong Kong police have repeatedly pointed to other jurisdictions, including Western democracies, that also make wide use of surveillance cameras for law enforcement. For instance, Singapore has 90,000 cameras and the United Kingdom has more than seven million, Tang told local newspaper Sing Tao Daily in June.

And, some critics say, what sets Hong Kong apart from other places is its political environment – which has seen an ongoing crackdown on political dissent, as it draws closer to authoritarian mainland China.

Following unprecedented and often violent anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019, local and central authorities imposed sweeping national security laws that have been used to jail activists, journalists and political opponents, and target civil society groups and outspoken media outlets.

Hong Kong’s leaders have said the laws are needed to restore stability after the protests in the nominally semi-autonomous city, and argue their legislation is similar to other national security laws around the world.

“The difference is how the technology is being used,” said Samantha Hoffman, a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research who has studied China’s use of technology for security and propaganda.

Places like the United States and the UK may have problems with how they implement that technology, too – but “this is fundamentally different… It has to do specifically with the system of government, as well as the way that the party state… uses the law to maintain its own power,” said Hoffman.

What this means for Hong Kong

Hong Kong has more than 54,500 public CCTV cameras used by government bodies – about seven cameras per 1,000 people, according to an estimate by Comparitech, a UK-based technology research firm.

That puts it about on par with New York City and still far behind London (13 per 1,000 people), but nowhere near mainland Chinese cities, which average about 440 cameras per 1,000 people.

Fears of mainland-style surveillance and policing caused notable angst during the 2019 protests, which broadened to encompass many Hong Kongers’ fears that the central Chinese government would encroach on the city’s limited autonomy.

Protesters on the streets covered their faces with masks and goggles to prevent identification, at times smashing or covering security cameras. At one point, they tore down a “smart” lamp post, even though Hong Kong authorities said it was only meant to collect data on traffic, weather and pollution.

At the time, activist and student leader Joshua Wong – who is now in prison on charges related to his activism and national security – said, “Can the Hong Kong government ensure that they will never install facial recognition tactics into the smart lamp post? … They can’t promise it and they won’t because of the pressure from Beijing.”

Across the border, the model of surveillance that protesters feared is ubiquitous – with China often celebrating the various achievements of its real-time facial recognition algorithms, and exporting surveillance technology to countries around the world.

According to an analysis by Comparitec, eight of the top 10 most surveilled cities in the world per capita are in China, where facial recognition is an inescapable part of daily life – from the facial scans required to register a new phone number, to facial recognition gates in some subway stations.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government mandated a QR “health code” to track people’s health status, which in some places required facial scans.

But the technology has also been used in more repressive ways.

In the far-western region of Xinjiang, Beijing has used cameras to monitor members of the Muslim-majority Uyghur population. And when unprecedented nationwide protests broke out in late 2022 against the government’s strict Covid policies, police used facial recognition along with other sophisticated surveillance tools to track down protesters, The New York Times found.

“(China’s) public security surveillance systems … tend to track lists of particular people, maybe people with a history of mental illness or participation in protests, and make a note of people who are marked as being troublesome in some way,” Hoffman said.

The systems then “track those specific people across the city and across its surveillance network.”

“I think it’s fair to anticipate that the use of CCTV and facial recognition technology in Hong Kong will begin to look a lot like those in mainland China over time,” she said.

Hong Kong police have argued the cameras help fight crime, pointing to a pilot program earlier this year of 15 cameras installed in one district. Already, those cameras have provided evidence and clues for at least six crimes, Tang told Sing Tao Daily – and police will prioritize high-risk or high-crime areas for the remaining cameras.

The first five months of this year saw 3% more crimes than the same period last year, Sing Tao reported.

When considering AI-equipped cameras, “the police will definitely comply with relevant laws,” the force added.

Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, warned that the new cameras could be “used for political repression” if they are employed under the “draconian” national security law.

Unless authorities assure the public that the cameras won’t be used for that purpose, “this is likely to be a further step in making Hong Kong law enforcement closer to how it is done on the Chinese mainland,” he said.

How to regulate facial recognition

Other experts argued it’s far too soon to say what the impact will be in Hong Kong, since authorities have not laid out in detail how they would use the technology.

“Hong Kong law doesn’t, in all measures, mirror what happens in mainland China,” said Normann Witzleb, an associate professor in data protection and privacy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong,

But that’s why it’s all the more important for authorities to address a raft of yet-unanswered questions, he said.

For instance, it remains unclear whether Hong Kong will deploy live facial recognition that constantly scans the environment, or whether the tech will only be applied to past footage when certain crimes occur or when legal authorization is granted.

Witzleb also raised the question of who would have the power to authorize the use of facial recognition, and what situations may warrant it. Would it be used to prosecute crime and locate suspects, for example – or for other public safety measures like identifying missing people?

And, Witzleb added, will police run the technology through their existing image databases, or use it more broadly with images held by other public authorities, or even publicly available imagery of anyone?

“It’s important to design guidelines for those systems that take proper recognition of the potential benefits that they have, but that also acknowledge they’re not foolproof, and that they have the potential to interfere with (people’s) rights in serious ways,” Witzleb said.

Regardless of how facial recognition might be used, both Hoffman and Witzleb said the presence of that technology and the increased number of security cameras may make Hong Kongers feel less free under the ever-watchful eye of the police.

“When you feel like you’re being monitored, that affects your behavior and your feelings of freedom as well,” Hoffman said. “I think that there’s an element of state coercion that doesn’t need to have to do with the effectiveness of the technology itself.”

Israel has pummeled Lebanon with an unprecedented airstrike campaign in less than three weeks, killing over 1,400 people, injuring nearly 7,500 others and displacing more than one million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The bombardment, which Israel says is targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the country, marks the world’s “most intense aerial campaign” outside of Gaza in the last two decades, according to the conflict monitoring group Airwars.

Over the course of two days, on September 24 and September 25, the Israel military said it used 2,000 munitions and carried out 3,000 strikes.

“This isn’t normal,” Tripp said of both the scale and size of Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.  While Israel’s air campaign is extremely “unusual,” Tripp said its assault on Gaza over the last year – where nearly 60% of buildings are estimated to have been damaged from Israeli strikes – have normalized such mass assaults.

Israel says it takes steps to minimize civilian harm, like making phone calls and sending text messages to residents in buildings designated for attack. Human rights groups like Amnesty International say such warnings do not absolve Israel of responsibilities under international humanitarian law to limit civilian harm.

As a result, the death toll in Lebanon continues to rise, with a fifth of its population now displaced.

Hezbollah and Israel have consistently been exchanging fire since October 8, the day after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, has said that it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza – where the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 41,000 people in the past year, according to the ministry of health in the territory – is reached.

The majority of the fire exchanged between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of the war has come from Israeli strikes, drones, shelling and missiles on Lebanese territory, according to data from ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data), an organization that collects data on violent conflict.

Israel has launched nearly 9,000 attacks into Lebanon since October 8; Hezbollah launched 1,500 attacks in that same time frame, according to the ACLED data.

On September 25, Israel further escalated its air campaign with an intense barrage of strikes across swathes of Lebanon, marking the deadliest day for Lebanon since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war – and a turning point in the current conflict.

While most of Israel’s airstrikes over the past year have targeted southern Lebanon, Israel has also ramped up its attacks on Lebanon’s capital in recent weeks, with multiple airstrikes in southern Beirut flattening residential buildings and heavily populated civilian areas.

A rapid succession of strikes has killed at least seven high-ranking Hezbollah commanders and officials in recent weeks, dealing the most significant blow to the group since its formation in the early 1980s.

Those strikes have mostly been concentrated in the city’s southern Dahiyeh neighborhood, a densely packed residential area and Hezbollah stronghold. It was there that Israel assassinated the militant group’s leader in an air raid on his underground bunker on September 27.

But as Israel’s campaign to disarm Hezbollah continues, civilians are paying the highest price, including 127 children who have been killed in less than three weeks, according to the health ministry.

On September 23 alone, at least 558 people – including 50 children and 94 women – were killed.

Women and girls are also particularly affected by the displacement caused by the airstrikes, according to Lebanon’s country director at the humanitarian agency CARE International. Nearly half of the people in Lebanon’s emergency shelters for displaced people are children, and the facilities are operating beyond capacity, Michael Adams said.

Now, Israel is targeting central Beirut  – not its suburbs – with airstrikes for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Meanwhile, a quarter of Lebanese territory is now under Israeli military evacuation orders​ as Israel intensifies its ground operation in the south, with its inhabitants pushed more than 30 miles north of their homes.

More than 100 villages in southern Lebanon have now been issued the evacuation notices, stoking fears of an expanded ground invasion.

Residents have no idea when they might be able to return – or what they might find remaining.

Yair Pinhas grew up hiking in the hills around Kiryat Shmona, his hometown in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

“We always thought that the October 7 (attack) would happen here, we always talked about it,” he said, rolling a cigarette outside a hotel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 40 miles from Kiryat Shmona.

Pinhas’ parents and his elderly grandmother have been living in this hotel for almost a year, ever since they were evacuated from Kiryat Shmona following the October 7 terror attacks. Pinhas spent months couch-surfing with friends in Tel Aviv before renting an apartment there; he comes regularly to see his family.

Kiryat Shmona, which sits in a pocket of Israeli land surrounded by Lebanon, just a couple of miles to the south and east from the border, sits on the opposite side of Israel to where the Hamas-led attacks took place last year. But its proximity to Lebanon makes it vulnerable to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that has been attacking Israel on a regular basis over the past year, in support of Hamas.

Israel has responded with cross-border attacks and the two sides have been engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation since October 8. Hezbollah has said it will not stop striking Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

The city was hit multiple times in recent months, most recently by a barrage of rockets that caused heavy damage and several fires on Friday morning, according to Israeli police.

“When I was growing up, it wasn’t just sirens like now… it was someone blaring from a car, ‘everybody get to shelters! Everybody get to shelters!’ And in school, when the alarm went off, nobody was freaking out because we were used to it,” he said.

“Everybody goes into the shelter, you hear the bombs and then wait for somebody to tell you it’s safe to leave,” he explained, adding that while the locals have gotten used to attacks from the skies, there has always been the worry that Hezbollah could try to storm them from the ground.

“There was a warning some months before October 7, saying you need to know that the next war won’t be just rockets. They will come here. There are a lot of tunnels, and we need to prepare ourselves… and we didn’t. People are stupid. Until something happens, you don’t really act,” he said.

But then came the shock of the terror attacks, when Hamas and other militant groups killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped some 250 more into Gaza.

“Everything has changed then,” Pinhas said. “We thought our army was strong and prepared and suddenly you see this, shooting everywhere. I had three friends who were at the Nova festival, one of them died, two were saved,” he said.

‘There will be a lot of deaths’

The Israeli government said the fate of people like Pinhas is among the reasons why it needs to act forcefully against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah had fired more than 8,000 rockets at Israel since October 8, forcing some 60,000 people to flee their homes along the border.

“Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say enough is enough. We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes,” he said.

Shortly after Netanyahu spoke at the UN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a deadly strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, targeting and killing Hezbollah’s long term leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Three days later, the IDF said it was launching a “limited and localized” ground operation in Lebanon. The IDF’s top spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the move was designed to prevent an October-7 style attack by Hezbollah and “to enable all 60,000 Israelis to safely return back to their homes in northern Israel.”

But at least some of the people whose fates Netanyahu invoked during his speech are questioning the decision.

“I think that it’s very dangerous for the army to go to Lebanon, because there are many, many traps… I think that we can protect the border by plane. Or go (in) and come back… But not stay (in Lebanon), it’s too dangerous,” she said.

Hatan, whose house overlooks the Lebanese border, has lived in Shtula her whole life. She said that she’s worried current warfare is much more deadly than it was in 2006, the last time Israel invaded Lebanon.

Pinhas, too, is conflicted about Israel’s decision to cross the border.

“It’s very hard. On (the) one hand, I can say, yes, you’re right, because we need to go back home and we need to bring peace to our town. So my first thought is we need to do something about it, because their (Hezbollah’s) main purpose is to kill us,” he said.

“But the other thing that I’m feeling, and everybody’s feeling that, is that this is very dangerous, and there will be a lot of deaths. Hezbollah, they know very well their territory there, this is their playground. This is not like in 2006, this is not a small group, we gave them a lot of time to prepare themselves and get a lot of ammunition,” he added, referencing the 2006 Israeli invasion into Lebanon which lasted 34 days and ended in a stalemate after killing some 1,100 people on the Lebanese side and about 170 Israelis.

The Israeli offensive is among the most intense in decades, surpassed only by its bombing of Gaza.

Standing on a hilltop in Kiryat Shmona, the scale of the bombardment becomes apparent as a steady stream of loud bangs reverberates throughout the valley. A loud boom when the artillery round gets fired, followed by a whizz overhead. A while later, a deep thud of the impact somewhere behind the border.

A city of some 22,000, Kiryat Shmona has turned into a ghost town over the past year. Signs of destruction are clearly visible throughout its streets – shrapnel holes in facades, damage caused by falling debris, destruction caused by direct hits by rockets.

On Thursday, marking the Jewish new year, the Pinhas family snuck back into Kiryat Shmona for a brief visit.

“To water the plants and feed the cats. There are many street cats in Kiryat Shmona and they need feeding,” Pinhas said.

Several rockets were fired at the city from Lebanon on Thursday but were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense systems, the bright light of interceptor missiles popping up in the skies and chasing away the threat.

A black and white cat, meanwhile, continued to rummage through the pile of debris lying in front of a family home destroyed in an earlier rocket attack.

A 21-year-old Yazidi woman has been rescued from Gaza where she had been held captive by Hamas for years after being trafficked by ISIS.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that Fawzia Amin Sido was freed this week in an operation coordinated between Israel, the United States and other international actors.

She said that she was initially kidnapped by ISIS as a child in August 2014 when the group captured the city of Sinjar in the Nineveh Governorate of northern Iraq, executing Yazidi men and boys and committing acts of sexual violence and rape against women and girls, among other crimes.

Over the next few years, Fawzia was trafficked to different locations across several countries.

“We ended up in Al-Hol camp (in Syria) before we were smuggled to Idlib in 2019, and from there, we went to Turkey. In 2020, they arranged a passport for me in Turkey so I could fly from Istanbul to Hurghada, Egypt, and then to Gaza,” she said.

“Hamas constantly harassed me due to my Yazidi background and contact with my family, even going so far as to format my phone [erase its contents] during their investigations. After a year, they moved me to a guest house.”

When the Israel-Hamas war broke out in 2023, she was again moved around frequently – until October 1, when she said an NGO rescued her.

The IDF said that her captor was killed, “presumably during IDF strikes” in Gaza, allowing her to flee to a hideout, from where she was rescued and taken to the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

“From there, American officials took me and helped return me to Baghdad,” she said.

Israel released a video showing her reuniting with her family members, who were overcome with emotion as they embraced her.

Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said she was freed after over four months of efforts from Iraqi government agencies working with American and Jordanian authorities.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that the US helped evacuate Fawzia from Gaza. He echoed Israel’s account, saying that “the recent death of her captor in Gaza allowed her to escape.”

“We were contacted by the Iraqi government, who was made aware of the fact that she escaped, that she was alive, and that she wanted to come home to her family. And the government of Iraq asked us to do whatever we could to get her out of Gaza and get her home. So over the past few weeks, we worked with a number of our partners in the region to get her out of Gaza,” Miller said at a press briefing on Thursday.

The fate of a possible successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is unclear following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

Safieddine is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah – the two studied in Iran together in the early 1980s. Just like Nasrallah, Safieddine is a staunch critic of Israel and the West, with deep alliances with the Iranian leadership.

Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat. The group has yet to name a successor to Nasrallah.

The executive council is one of five bodies that make up the Shura Council, which is the organization’s decision-making body. The executive council oversees political matters, as opposed to the Jihad Council which is the group’s military body, which Safieddine is a member of.

Safieddine has previously spoken of the “strong relationship” between Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and especially Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in US airstrike at Baghdad airport in 2020. Safieddine’s son is married to Soleimani’s daughter.

The Shiite cleric was born in 1964 in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Qanoun En Nahr. Like the late Hezbollah leader, he wears the black turban signaling that he is a “Sayyid,” a Shiite honorific title denoting descent from Prophet Mohammed.

The 60-year-old cleric has had a visible presence across Hezbollah’s political stage, especially over the past year. Throughout the Gaza war, Safieddine would make statements denouncing Israel’s actions in the enclave and on his country’s southern border.

Nasrallah “started tailoring positions for him within a variety of different councils within Lebanese Hezbollah. Some of them were more opaque than others. They’ve had him come, go out and speak,” Phillip Smyth, an expert who studies Iran-backed Shiite militias, told Reuters.

Speaking at the funeral ceremony of one of the slain Hezbollah members in May, Safieddine boasted that his group is nonetheless strong and resilient, prioritizing – along with their Iranian allies – the Palestinian cause and the need to liberate the Palestinian people.

Following the back-to-back explosions that targeted Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, Safieddine said that his organization “will not back down until the end.”

Saffiedine has long been a hawkish critic of US policy, which he sees as aiding and abetting Israel’s actions in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

In 2021, he accused Washington of “interfering” in Lebanese domestic politics, saying that “American tyranny” is “sabotaging” the region’s nations, citing Iraq and Afghanistan among examples.

The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2017 designated Safieddine a foreign terrorist.