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Arab World

No Aid Supplies Left and Staff Starving in Gaza, Says Norwegian Refugee Council

People make their way along al-Rashid street in western Jabalia on July 22, 2025, after receiving humanitarian aid from an aid distribution point in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP)
People make their way along al-Rashid street in western Jabalia on July 22, 2025, after receiving humanitarian aid from an aid distribution point in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP)
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No Aid Supplies Left and Staff Starving in Gaza, Says Norwegian Refugee Council

People make their way along al-Rashid street in western Jabalia on July 22, 2025, after receiving humanitarian aid from an aid distribution point in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP)
People make their way along al-Rashid street in western Jabalia on July 22, 2025, after receiving humanitarian aid from an aid distribution point in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP)

The Norwegian Refugee Council told Reuters on Tuesday its aid stocks are completely depleted in Gaza, with some of its staff now starving, and the organization accused Israel of paralyzing its work.

"Our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left," Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the council told Reuters in an interview via video link from Oslo.

The council's comments echo those made earlier on Tuesday by the head of the Palestinian refugee agency, who said UNRWA's staff were fainting on the job from hunger and exhaustion.

The NRC says that for the last 145 days, it has not been able to get hundreds of truckloads of tents, water, sanitation, food and education materials into Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, and Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has denied accusations that it is preventing aid from reaching Gaza, and has accused Palestinian group Hamas of stealing food, which Hamas denies.

"Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in... That's why we are so angry. Because our job is to help," Egeland said.

"Israel is not yielding. They just want to paralyze our work," he added.

The NRC has 64 Palestinian and two international staff on the ground in Gaza. On Sunday the NRC had to move 33 of its staff out of Deir al Balah following Israeli evacuation warnings.

The NRC said its supplies of safe drinking water are also running out, due to dwindling supplies of fuel to run desalination plants. The water has reached 100,000 people in central and northern parts of Gaza in recent weeks

An Israeli official told Reuters there is about a half a million liters of fuel that the UN has been given approval to bring in.

"They're bringing in fuel and collecting, but they can bring in and they can collect more, and we are having discussions with them," the official said.

The official also said that there are about 700 trucks of unpacked aid on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing which have not been distributed.

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Arab World

Salam to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Refuse to Tie Lebanon’s Fate to Iran’s Interests

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters at the Grand Serail in Beirut, December 3, 2025. (Reuters)
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters at the Grand Serail in Beirut, December 3, 2025. (Reuters)
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Salam to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Refuse to Tie Lebanon’s Fate to Iran’s Interests

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters at the Grand Serail in Beirut, December 3, 2025. (Reuters)
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam speaks to reporters at the Grand Serail in Beirut, December 3, 2025. (Reuters)

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam stressed on Saturday that the state was doing everything possible on the political and diplomatic levels to end Israel’s war on Lebanon and ease its catastrophic impact on the people, especially the displaced.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that diplomatic efforts have not reached their desired results because the situation in Lebanon is being tied to the crises and war in the region.

“We could have avoided being impacted by the conflict were it not for the strategic error committed by Hezbollah by being dragged us into it,” he added.

This been a catastrophe for Lebanon and “the environment that the party claims it wants to protect,” Salam went on to say.

The war has been imposed on all the Lebanese people, he reiterated. “It is not in their interest,” he declared, underscoring the need to end the war.

Moreover, the PM revealed that foreign efforts to end the war are being met with “an extreme hardline position by Israel” and the United States’ preoccupation with the ongoing war.

He said the war was having dangerous repercussions on the security of the Arab Gulf, condemning and questioning Iran’s attacks against countries that have extended their hands in friendship towards it and repeatedly expressed their opposition to war before it erupted.

Salam underlined his government’s determination to implement its latest decisions related to banning Hezbollah’s military and security operations.

The state’s armed forces and judiciary are carrying out their duties to that end, but the war is making implementation more difficult, he said.

On Lebanon’s decision to impose visas on visiting Iranians, the PM explained it was due to intelligence about Iranian Revolutionary Guards operations that could harm Lebanon’s national security.

Lebanon wants the best relations with Iran, state to state, Salam added, while categorically rejecting tying the Lebanese people’s interests to that of another country as has already happened.

On the displacement of the people of the South and Beirut’s southern suburbs, the PM said the government was sparing no effort to ease their suffering and meet their essential needs, such as food and medicine.

This is a major challenge given the state’s limited means, he acknowledged. He added that he was personally overseeing aid efforts.

Meanwhile, France has continued to exert efforts to resolve the crisis. President Emmanuel Macron held telephone talks with President Joseph Aoun for the third time in two days.

His efforts have yet to make any breakthrough, ministerial sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The situation needs more time, they revealed, expecting that mid-next week should witness renewed efforts.

Aoun also received a telephone call from Spain’s King Felipe, who expressed Madrid’s solidarity with Beirut.

Earlier on Saturday, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz warned the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah or "pay ‌a very ‌heavy price." 

"We (ISRAEL) ‌have ⁠no territorial claims ⁠against Lebanon, but we will not accept a situation ⁠where what ‌existed ‌for many ‌years — firing ‌from Lebanese territory toward the State of ‌Israel — is renewed," Katz said in ⁠a ⁠statement.  

"Therefore, we are turning and warning: act and take action before we act even more." 

The United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon urged Lebanon and Israel to enter talks to negotiate an end hostilities after the outbreak of a renewed Israel-Hezbollah war.  

"As bad as things are today, they are set to get even worse," Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said.  

"Talks between Lebanon and Israel can be the game changer needed to save future generations from going, time and again, through the same nightmare".  

In December, Lebanese and Israeli civilian representatives engaged in their first direct talks in decades as part of a meeting of a committee monitoring the November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.  

Lebanon was engulfed by the expanding Middle East war on Monday, after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel to avenge the death of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli attacks on Iran. 

Arab World

Israeli Army Warns Remaining Residents of Beirut’s Southern Suburbs to Evacuate

A destroyed building following an Israeli air strike in the Chiyah neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, 07 March 2026. (EPA)
A destroyed building following an Israeli air strike in the Chiyah neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, 07 March 2026. (EPA)
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Israeli Army Warns Remaining Residents of Beirut’s Southern Suburbs to Evacuate

A destroyed building following an Israeli air strike in the Chiyah neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, 07 March 2026. (EPA)
A destroyed building following an Israeli air strike in the Chiyah neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, 07 March 2026. (EPA)

The Israeli military on Saturday warned the remaining residents of Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway, to evacuate immediately.

"Urgent warning to residents of Beirut's southern suburbs, especially those who have not yet evacuated the area. We reiterate -- save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately," Arabic-language spokesman for the military Avichay Adraee said on X.

Tens of thousands of residents have fled the suburbs, known as Dahieh in Arabic, since Israel first issued an evacuation warning on Thursday ahead of its strikes.

Lebanon's social affairs minister said on Saturday that 454,000 people had been registered as displaced since the outbreak of the new war between Israel and Hezbollah.

In a press briefing, Haneen Sayed said that the total number of people who registered their names on a website affiliated with the ministry reached 454,000, including 112,525 people registered in government shelters.

Sayed urged remaining displaced people to register their names with the authorities, with Israel this week having warned residents of Beirut's densely populated southern suburbs and hundreds of square kilometers of southern Lebanon to evacuate.

Arab World

Strike Hits Iraqi PMF Base Near Mosul

A photograph shows the remains of a drone that was reportedly aimed at Erbil International Airport and crashed outside Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on March 3, 2026. (AFP)
A photograph shows the remains of a drone that was reportedly aimed at Erbil International Airport and crashed outside Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on March 3, 2026. (AFP)
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Strike Hits Iraqi PMF Base Near Mosul

A photograph shows the remains of a drone that was reportedly aimed at Erbil International Airport and crashed outside Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on March 3, 2026. (AFP)
A photograph shows the remains of a drone that was reportedly aimed at Erbil International Airport and crashed outside Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on March 3, 2026. (AFP)

A strike targeted a military base belonging to the former paramilitary coalition Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in northern Iraq on Saturday, two PMF sources told AFP.

"An airstrike, likely American, hit a PMF base south of the city of Mosul," an official said. Another source confirmed the strike took place.

The PMF is an alliance of factions now integrated into the regular army.

Bases belonging to the PMF have been hit several times since the start of the war in the Middle East, with strikes hitting Tehran-backed armed groups.

Pro-Iran factions have brigades that operate within the PMF, but have a reputation for acting on their own.

They are also part of the loose alliance of the “Islamic Resistance” in Iraq that has vowed not to stay neutral in the war and has been claiming attacks against US bases in Iraq and the region.

Iraq, long a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the conflict engulfing the Middle East, but it has not been spared.

It was drawn into the war from the outset, with strikes blamed on the United States and Israel targeting Iran-backed groups.