A top United Nations official said during a visit to Beirut Saturday that he is concerned that Lebanon's ports and airport might be taken out of service, with serious implications for getting food supplies into the county, as Israel continues its offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. “What I have seen and heard today is devastating, but the sense is that this can get much worse still, and that needs to be avoided,” said Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, in an interview with The Associated Press. He appealed for “all diplomatic efforts possible to try to find a political solution” to the war and for supply lines to remain open. “We have huge concerns and there are many, but one of them is indeed that we need the ports and we need the supply routes to continue to be able to operate,” Skau said. In Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas since the Palestinian militant group launched a deadly incursion into southern Israel a year ago, hunger has skyrocketed as humanitarian organizations have complained of major obstacles to getting food and other supplies into the blockaded enclave. Skau said he believes that Israeli authorities had given “commitments” that in Lebanon, the ports and airport would not be taken out of commission. “But of course, this is a very changing environment. So we don’t take anything for granted,” he said. In recent weeks, Israel has escalated its aerial bombardment and launched a ground invasion in Lebanon. Read: Heavy Israeli bombardment in northern Gaza as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon hit again About 1.2 million people are displaced in Lebanon, according to government estimates, of whom some 200,000 are staying in collective shelters, where the WFP is supplying them with meals. Skau noted that food prices have already increased as a result of the conflict, although Lebanon's sole international airport and its main sea ports are still functioning. The WFP had stocked up enough food to supply 1 million people -- about one-fifth of Lebanon's population -- for up to a month, he said, but now is trying to build up supplies that could feed that number through the end of the year. “We will, of course, be having to restock, and for that, the ports will be critical and other supply lines,” he said. For instance, the agency has been bringing food in from Jordan through Syria into Lebanon by land, he said. Earlier this month, an Israeli strike on the road to the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria cut off access to that crossing. Since the Masnaa crossing was struck, people fleeing Lebanon have continued to cross on foot, while vehicles -- including those bringing supplies for the WFP -- have had to use another crossing in the far north of the country, making the journey more arduous and expensive. Skau appealed for the Masnaa crossing to be reopened. Lebanese General Security, which oversees border crossings, has recorded 320,184 Syrians and 117,727 Lebanese citizens crossing into Syria since Sept. 23, when the major escalation in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon started. Read more: At least 22 killed in airstrikes in central Beirut, with Israel also firing on UN peacekeepers The influx comes at a time when the WFP has reduced its food assistance in Syria as a result of funding shortages. “We’ve gone over the past two years from assisting some 6 million people to around 1.5 (million),” Skau said. “And with that, of course, our capacity has been tightened and now we need to scale up again.”

Russian strikes hit near airports Friday in the western Ukrainian cities of Ivano-Frankiivsk and Lutsk, far from Russia’s main offensive, possibly indicating a new direction in the war. The mayor of Ivano-Frankiivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, ordered residents in neighboring areas to head to shelters after an air raid alert. The mayor of Lutsk also announced an airstrike near the airport. There were no immediate reports of casualties. New satellite photos, meanwhile, appeared to show a massive convoy outside the Ukrainian capital had fanned out into towns and forests near Kyiv with artillery pieces raised for firing in another potentially ominous movement. The photos emerged amid more international efforts to isolate and sanction Russia, particularly after a deadly airstrike on a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol that Western and Ukrainian officials decried as a war crime. READ: UN council to meet on Russian claim of US labs in Ukraine The U.S. and other nations were poised Friday to announce the revocation of Russia’s “most favored nation” trade status, which would allow higher tariffs to be imposed on some Russian imports. Unbowed by the sanctions, Russia kept up its bombardment of the besieged southern seaport of Mariupol while Kyiv braced for an onslaught, its mayor boasting that the capital had become practically a fortress protected by armed civilians. Three Russian airstrikes hit the eastern industrial city of Dnipro on Friday, killing at least one person, according to Interior Ministry adviser Anton Heraschenko. Meanwhile, Russian forces were pushing toward Kyiv from the northwest and east but were repulsed from Chernihiv as Ukrainian fighters regained control of Baklanova Muraviika, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said in a statement. The convoy seen in satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed the 40-mile (64-kilometer) line of vehicles, tanks and artillery had been redeployed, the company said. Armored units were seen in towns near the Antonov Airport north of the city. Some vehicles moved into forests, Maxar reported, with towed howitzers nearby in position to open fire. The Russian column massed outside the city early last week, but its advance appeared to stall as reports of food and fuel shortages circulated. U.S. officials said Ukrainian troops also targeted the convoy with anti-tank missiles. Still, the immediacy of the threat to Kyiv was unclear. A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said Russian forces moving toward Kyiv had advanced about 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) in the past 24 hours, with some elements as close as 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) from the city. The official did not indicate if the convoy had dispersed or otherwise repositioned in a significant way, saying some vehicles were seen moving off the road into the tree line in recent days. In Mariupol, a city of 430,000, the situation was increasingly dire as civilians trapped inside the city scrounged for food and fuel. More than 1,300 people have died in the 10-day siege of the frigid city, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. READ: Russians keep pressure on Mariupol; massive convoy breaks up Residents have no heat or phone service, and many have no electricity. Nighttime temperatures are regularly below freezing, and daytime ones normally hover just above it. Bodies are being buried in mass graves. The streets are littered with burned-out cars, broken glass and splintered trees. “They have a clear order to hold Mariupol hostage, to mock it, to constantly bomb and shell it,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. He said the Russians began a tank attack right where there was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor. On Thursday, firefighters tried to free a boy trapped in the rubble. One grasped the boy's hand. His eyes blinked, but he was otherwise still. It was not clear if he survived. Nearby, at a mangled truck, a woman wrapped in a blue blanket shuddered at the sound of an explosion. Grocery stores and pharmacies were emptied days ago by people breaking in to get supplies, according to a local official with the Red Cross, Sacha Volkov. A black market is operating for vegetables, meat is unavailable, and people are stealing gasoline from cars, Volkov said. Places protected from bombings are hard to find, with basements reserved for women and children, he said. Residents, Volkov said, are turning on one another: “People started to attack each other for food.” An exhausted-looking Aleksander Ivanov pulled a cart loaded with bags down an empty street flanked by damaged buildings. “I don’t have a home anymore. That’s why I’m moving,” he said. “It doesn’t exist anymore. It was hit, by a mortar.” Repeated attempts to send in food and medicine and evacuate civilians have been thwarted by Russian shelling, Ukrainian authorities said. “They want to destroy the people of Mariupol. They want to make them starve,” Vereshchuk said. “It’s a war crime.” The number of refugees fleeing the country topped 2.3 million, and some 100,000 people have been evacuated during the past two days from seven cities under Russian blockade in the north and center of the country, including the Kyiv suburbs, Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy told Russian leaders that the invasion will backfire on them as their economy is strangled. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply. “You will definitely be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address, warning that "you will be hated by Russian citizens.” Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk, saying the country has endured sanctions before. ″We will overcome them," he said at a televised meeting of government officials. He did, however, acknowledge the sanctions create “certain challenges.” In addition to those who have fled the country, millions have been driven from their homes inside Ukraine. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said about 2 million people, half the population of the metropolitan area, have left the capital. “Every street, every house … is being fortified," he said. "Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.” On Thursday, a 14-year-old girl named Katya was recovering at the Brovary Central District Hospital on the outskirts of Kyiv after her family was ambushed as they tried to flee the area. She was shot in the hand when their car was raked with gunfire from a roadside forest, said her mother, who identified herself only as Nina. The girl’s father, who drove frantically from the ambush on blown-out tires, underwent surgery. His wife said he had been shot in the head and had two fingers blown off. Western officials said Russian forces have made little progress on the ground in recent days and are seeing heavier losses and stiffer Ukrainian resistance than Moscow apparently anticipated. But Putin’s forces have used air power and artillery to pummel Ukraine's cities. Early in the day, the Mariupol city council posted a video showing a convoy it said was bringing in food and medicine. But as night fell, it was unclear if those buses had reached the city. A child was among three people killed in the hospital airstrike Wednesday. Seventeen people were also wounded, including women waiting to give birth, doctors, and children buried in the rubble. Images of the attack, with pregnant women covered in dust and blood, dominated news reports in many countries. French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “a shameful and immoral act of war.” Britain’s Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, “it is a war crime.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine's neighbor Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying, “The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.”