An Associated Press team was among journalists taken on a tour inside a hospital in Beirut’s southern suburb where the Israeli army claimed without offering evidence that Hezbollah was storing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in tunnels underneath.

The Sahel General Hospital had already been emptied of most patients and staff following intense bombardment of the area in recent days, and the few remaining ones were hastily evacuated late Monday after the Israeli claim.

The U.S. is making an 11th-hour effort to resuscitate some aspects of the halted cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas weeks before the presidential election and as Israel’s invasion of neighboring Lebanon intensifies, according to a senior State Department official.

Since negotiations fell apart over the summer, Americans have shifted to focus on a post-war plan for Israel and Gaza. The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity late Monday to preview Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s strategy, said that stakeholders have reached consensus on some aspects of the so-called day-after plan and that the U.S. is hopeful that this progress will create goodwill to get parties back to the table on a ceasefire.

Two weeks out from Election Day, the crisis in the Middle East is looming over the race for the White House, with one candidate struggling to find just the right words to navigate its difficult cross-currents and the other making bold pronouncements that the age-old conflict can quickly be set right.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been painstakingly — and not always successfully — trying to balance talk of strong support for Israel with harsh condemnations of civilian casualties among Palestinians and others caught up in Israel's wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

Lebanon’s state news agency said another Israeli airstrike has targeted the country’s main border crossing with Syria, leaving a second large crater on the highway running through it.

The National News Agency reported that the early Tuesday airstrike was closer to the Syrian side of the crossing, known as Jdeidet Yabous. Syrian TV also reported an airstrike in the border area.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday on his 11th visit to the region since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. The U.S. hopes to revive cease-fire efforts after the killing of top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, but so far all the warring parties appear to be digging in.

Israel is still at war with Hamas more than a year after the militant group's Oct. 7 attack, and with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it launched a ground invasion earlier this month. Israel is also expected to strike Iran after its ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1.

A hospital director in Lebanon has denied accusations by the Israeli army that Hezbollah is storing money and gold under the hospital.

Fadi Alameh, a member of parliament who is also the director of Sahel General Hospital, denied there are tunnels under the hospital and said that the medical center south of Beirut is now being evacuated.

Police stormed an abandoned building in Beirut’s commercial district, Hamra, to evict hundreds of displaced by Israel’s war, who have been squatting there for weeks.

Lebanese authorities have prepared hundreds of shelters to accommodate the displaced. But as their numbers climbed to nearly 20% of the population, or an estimated 1.2 million people, official shelters have not been able to cope.

Global environmental leaders gather Monday in Cali, Colombia to assess the world's plummeting biodiversity levels and commitments by countries to protect plants, animals and critical habitats.

The two-week United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP16, is a follow-up to the 2022 Montreal meetings where 196 countries signed a historic global treaty to protect biodiversity.

In the coming days, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be shaking hands with multiple world leaders, including China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian.

They will all be in the Russian city of Kazan on Tuesday for a meeting of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, defying predictions that the war in Ukraine and an international arrest warrant against Putin would turn him into a pariah.

Voters remain largely divided over whether they prefer Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris to handle key economic issues, although Harris earns slightly better marks on elements such as taxes for the middle class, according to a new poll.

A majority of registered voters in the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research describe the economy as poor. About 7 in 10 say the nation is going in the wrong direction.