By FADI TAWIL and BASSEM MROUE

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese civilians fled from the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday, seeking refuge in schools in Lebanon’s capital following a new and deadly escalation between Israel and the Iran-allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported at least 31 people were killed and 149 wounded in overnight strikes in the Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon.

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The Lebanese government later Monday slammed Hezbollah’s decision to enter Iran’s war with Israel and the United States, calling the militant group’s actions illegal and demanding it hand over its weapons.

Highways were jammed overnight and into Monday with people fleeing after what was Israel’s deadliest barrage on Lebanon in more than a year, striking hours after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border for the first time in more than a year.

Ali Hamdan was stuck in gridlock on the road between his village in southern Lebanon, Deir al-Zahrani, and the port city of Sidon. What should have been a half-hour’s drive had taken seven hours, he said.

“I don’t know how long it will take us to reach Beirut,” he said. “I’m headed toward Beirut, but I don’t know where yet. We don’t have a place to stay.”

At a public school in Beirut, hastily converted into a temporary shelter, families arrived carrying mattresses, plastic bags, and bundles of clothing. Other families sat on sidewalks beside their belongings, some men smoking as they waited for space to open inside.

Volunteers moved through the crowd, registering names as families filled classrooms and gathered in the school courtyard.

Hussein Abu Ali, who fled a southern Beirut suburb with his wife and children, described the moment the strikes hit.

“My son began shaking and crying,” he said. “Where are you supposed to go? I stepped outside, then back in because I was afraid of shooting in the air. I gathered my children and went down to the street.”

Nadia Al‑Salman, displaced from the southern town of Majdal Zoun, said they left their homes “not out of fear or terror of the United States, but to fulfill our religious and legal duty to protect ourselves.”

“They do not intimidate or frighten us, and they will not make us retreat even an inch from the path of resistance,” she added.

During the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024, at one point, more than a million people were displaced in Lebanon. Many have been unable to return to their homes in the south, where villages along the border remain in ruins.

Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel a day after the militant Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, the conflict escalated into a full-scale war in September 2024 before a U.S. brokered ceasefire nominally halted the fighting two months later.

Since that ceasefire, Israel has continued to launch near-daily strikes in Lebanon, saying it aims to stop Hezbollah from rebuilding.

Monday’s escalation also marked the first time in more than a year that Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for firing into Israel. Hezbollah said in a statement that the strikes were carried out in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and for “repeated Israeli aggressions,” describing it as “a legitimate defensive response.”

But Lebanon’s government said it considers Hezbollah’s military activities illegal and that the group should hand over its weapons. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said after an emergency Cabinet meeting Monday that only the state should decide on matters of war and peace.

He added that Hezbollah’s military activities were banned going forward and called on security agencies to prevent the firing of missiles or drones from Lebanon and detain those behind the launch. It was the harshest stance the Lebanese government has taken yet toward Hezbollah, which also has a political party with a parliamentary bloc in addition to its armed militants.

Salam also called on the international community to work on getting a “clear and final commitment” from Israel to stop its strikes on Lebanon.

The Israeli military overnight issued a warning for residents of around 50 communities across southern and eastern Lebanon to evacuate. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Israel is keeping “all options on the table,” including a potential ground invasion of Lebanon and threatened that “Hezbollah will pay a very heavy price.”

He said Israel has called up more than 100,000 reservists since the war with Iran began on Saturday.

Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

By STEPHANIE LIECHTENSTEIN

VIENNA (AP) — Iran’s Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday alleged that airstrikes by the United States and Israel targeted the Natanz enrichment facility in his country.

That contradicts an assessment by the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi who said that “up to now” the agency has “no indication” that nuclear facilities have been hit in Iran.

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“Again they attacked Iran’s peaceful safeguarded nuclear facilities yesterday. Their justification that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is simply a big lie,” Reza Najafi told reporters at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, where a special session of the Board of Governors is being held at the request of Russia.

When asked by a reporter which nuclear facility he was referring to, Najafi replied “Natanz.”

The Natanz site, some 135 miles south of the capital, is a mix of above- and below-ground laboratories that did the majority of Iran’s uranium enrichment.

Before the war, the IAEA said Iran used advanced centrifuges there to enrich uranium up to 60% — a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Some of the material is presumed to have been onsite when the entire complex was attacked last June.

The main above-ground enrichment building at Natanz was known as the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant. Israel hit the building June 13, leaving it “functionally destroyed,” and seriously damaging underground halls holding cascades of centrifuges, the IAEA’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, said at the time. A U.S. follow-up attack on June 22 hit Natanz’s underground facilities with bunker-busting bombs, likely decimating what remained.

IAEA says “up to now” no nuclear installations hit in Iran

Addressing the special session of the Board of Governors, IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said that “up to now” the International Atomic Energy Agency has “no indication that any of the nuclear installations, including the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the Tehran Research Reactor or other nuclear fuel cycle facilities” in Iran have been damaged or hit.

He added that the IAEA continues to try to contact the Iranian nuclear regulatory authorities via the IAEA’s own Incident and Emergency Center “with no response so far,” given the limitations in communications caused by the conflict.

Grossi urged military restraint, warning that Iran and many other countries in the region that have been targeted militarily have “operational nuclear power plants and nuclear research reactors, as well as associated fuel storage sites, increasing the threat to nuclear safety.”

He added that so far “no elevation of radiation levels above the usual background levels has been detected in countries bordering Iran.”

Najafi attacks Trump

Najafi added that the U.S. uses “deception and disinformation to invade other countries.” He said that the war was launched by U.S. President Donald Trump, “who attempts to portray himself as a man of peace and asking for Nobel Peace Prize. Even when they talk about peace, it is a lie. And if they call for diplomacy, it’s about deception” he said.

Najafi said that the strikes against his country are “unlawful, criminal and brutal” and called on states of the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors to “categorically condemn” the attacks.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/

By ELAINE KURTENBACH and MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writers

Military strikes on Iran rattled global markets on Monday with U.S. futures following markets in Europe and Asia lower. Energy prices rose sharply.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each sank about 1%.

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The price of a barrel of U.S. benchmark rose more than 8% to $72.70 per barrel, a price not seen since the U.S. summer driving season and the 12-day Israel-Iran war. Brent crude jumped 9% to nearly $79.19 per barrel.

The spike in the cost for a barrel of crude could show up in a matter of days or weeks at gas pumps, with retailers forced to pay more for new shipments of gasoline.

Travel sectors, from airlines and cruise operators to global hotel chains, tumbled.

But it wasn’t just oil. Natural gas futures rose early 6% and futures for fuel used for transportation as well as industrial purposes, spiked more than 14%.

Germany’s DAX dropped 1.9% to 24,817.42, while in Paris the CAC 40 lost 1.7% to 8,435.80. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 1% to 10,808.53.

Shares fell in most Asian markets but they rose in Shanghai, where higher oil prices lifted some oil company stocks such as CNOOC, China Petroleum & Chemical and PetroChina to the 10% limit.

The Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.5% to 4,182.59, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng lost 2.1% to 26,059.85.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index initially fell more than 2%. It closed 1.4% lower at 58,057.24. Offsetting other losses, shares in defense-related stocks including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and IHI Corp. advanced.

In India, which could face disruptions to its access to oil due to the hostilities, the Sensex fell 1.3%.

Taiwan’s benchmark lost 0.9% and Singapore’s dropped 2.3%. In Bangkok, a major tourism destination for the Middle East, the SET fell 4%.

Markets were closed in South Korea for a holiday.

Gold, a safe haven for investment in times of uncertainty, rose 3.1% to about $5,408.10 per ounce.

The U.S. dollar also gained, rising to 156.88 Japanese yen from 156.27 yen late Friday. The euro slipped to $1.1740 from $1.1762.

The war is likely to disrupt oil supplies from Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. Attacks throughout the region, including on two vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, have constrained oil exports to the rest of the world.

“Roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas) flows squeeze through the Strait of Hormuz. This is not an obscure canal. It is the aorta of the global energy system,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

Prolonged interruptions to oil flows through the Middle East would have “huge implications for oil and LNG and every market everywhere if it occurs. Energy is an input to ALL production,” RaboResearch Global Economics & Markets said in a report.

Iran exports roughly 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, mostly to China. It may need to look elsewhere for supply if Iran’s exports are disrupted, another factor that could increase energy prices.

The size of China’s strategic oil reserves is a state secret. But a recent report by John Kemp of Base Research estimated them at 1.1 billion to 1.2 billion barrels –- equivalent to around 100 days or just over three months of imports.

The war’s impact on markets was muted somewhat because the attacks were anticipated, with a massive buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East. So traders had adjusted their positions to take that risk into account.

The conflict has shifted attention, for now, away from issues surrounding artificial intelligence that have dominated markets in recent months.

Treasury yields fell in the bond market as investors sought safer places for their money.

“When markets are fragile, they do not need a knockout blow. They just need another weight on the bar,” Innes said.

Also hurting the broad market was a report Friday showing that inflation at the U.S. wholesale level was at 2.9% last month, much higher than the 1.6% that economists expected.

That could pressure the Federal Reserve to hold off longer on its cuts to interest rates. Lower rates would give the economy and prices for investments a boost, but they risk worsening inflation.