France’s President Emmanuel Macron faced growing pressure on Tuesday to resign or hold a snap parliamentary election to end political chaos that has forced the resignation of five prime ministers in less than two years.

The 47-year-old centrist president has repeatedly said he will see out his second term, which ends in 2027.

But resignation calls, long confined to the fringes, have entered the mainstream during one of the worst political crises since the 1958 creation of the Fifth Republic, France’s current system of government.

On Tuesday, as Macron’s outgoing Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu held last-ditch talks to form a new government, his first premier in 2017, Edouard Philippe, said it was time for a new president to break the deadlock.

Speaking to RTL radio, Philippe said Macron should be “leaving in an orderly manner” to allow a way out of the crisis.

‘It’s a mess’

Political turmoil in the euro zone’s second largest economy was front page news across Europe at a time when US President Donald Trump is demanding the continent do more to shore up its own defenses and aid Ukraine.

Markets have taken fright, with investors keeping a close eye on France’s ability to cut a yawning budget deficit. French stocks fell 1.4% on Monday and the risk premium on French government bond yields rose to a nine-month high on the crisis.

“It’s a mess. It makes you sad,” said Brigitte Gries, a 70-year-old pensioner in Paris, summing up public consternation.

“We’re becoming a bit of a laughing stock around the world right now,” added taxi driver Soufiane Mansour in the southern city of Montpellier. “We’re a bit of a clown around the world and in Europe, unfortunately.”

‘Allies round on Macron’

Philippe, whom polls show to be the best-placed candidate to lead the political centre in a succession battle, was the second of Macron’s former prime ministers to distance themselves from him in as many days.

Gabriel Attal, another erstwhile Macron loyalist, was blunt in his criticism. He was prime minister for a few months last year before Macron called a snap vote that delivered a hung parliament with three ideologically opposed blocs.

“Like many French people, I no longer understand the president’s decisions,” he said on TF1 TV, after Macron asked Lecornu, who had just tendered his resignation, to go back to opponents for last-gasp talks.

Lecornu, whose 14-hour-old administration was the shortest in modern French history, was given two days to find consensus.

Attal, however, ruled out calling for Macron to resign, someone who took part in a meeting of his parliamentary group said.

‘Far-right snubs talks’

Meanwhile, Lecornu held talks with leaders of Macron’s centrist alliance and conservatives, in which they agreed that finding a deal on next year’s budget was a priority.

He will need others, including the Socialists, on board to have the numbers needed to form a majority in the National Assembly— not least to pass a budget for next year.

Lecornu now plans to talk with the opposition in the afternoon and on Wednesday morning, but the far-right National Rally said they saw no point in those talks and would skip them.

Party chiefs Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen instead “reiterate their call for the dissolution of the National Assembly,” the RN said.

The RN tops opinion polls, but those surveys show a repeat election would likely produce another divided parliament, with no group holding a majority.

Palestinians on Tuesday marked two years since Israel’s devastating war on Gaza began, a conflict that has left an indelible scar on the enclave and its people.

The grim anniversary comes as Israeli bombardment continues across the Strip, compounding what the United Nations has repeatedly described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Since October 7, 2023 — when Hamas launched its attack on Israel, triggering a full-scale war — Gaza has endured relentless air strikes, ground assaults, and a suffocating blockade.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, while tens of thousands more remain missing beneath the rubble of flattened neighbourhoods.

The two-year onslaught has also rendered the majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents homeless, forcing families into overcrowded makeshift shelters and tent camps amid severe shortages of food, water, and medicine.

A famine officially declared on August 22 this year has deepened Gaza’s suffering.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — a global measure of hunger — reported that over half a million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation, with many surviving on animal feed and contaminated water. Aid convoys, when allowed to enter, barely meet a fraction of the needs.

Despite the staggering toll, Israeli strikes have not ceased, with explosions continuing to rock parts of Gaza even as mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and the United States push for a ceasefire.

The anniversary also follows the recent civilian initiative known as the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international effort to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.

All participating boats were intercepted by the Israeli navy, and activists aboard were arrested, sparking widespread protests across Europe and other countries condemning Israel’s actions.

Delegations from Israel and Hamas are currently holding indirect talks in Egypt, following a US-backed proposal to end the war and facilitate a prisoner exchange.

Here are the highlights of the devastation brought by the Israeli offensive to Gaza:

Satellite images show destruction in Gaza

Lives shattered, hopes endure

Two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza has piled grief upon grief for displaced Palestinian Inas Abu Maamar.

In the first days of the war, a Reuters photograph showed Abu Maamar stricken in a hospital morgue, cradling the shrouded body of her five-year-old niece Saly.

Since then, Israeli airstrikes and tank shells have killed many of her close relatives and left her bereaved, hungry and homeless, caring for her orphaned young nephew.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embraced a plan by US President Donald Trump for Gaza, and Hamas has partially accepted it, but there is no certainty over when or whether the plan will end the war.

All previous efforts to halt the conflict since Israel began its offensive after October 7, 2023.

Israeli airstrike killed young niece

Saly was killed when an Israeli missile struck the family home in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem found Abu Maamar embracing her body at the Nasser Hospital morgue in Khan Younis on October 17, 2023.

The blast also killed Abu Maamar’s aunt and uncle, her sister-in-law and her cousins, as well as Saly’s baby sister Seba. This summer, her father and her brother Ramez, Saly’s father, were killed while bringing food back to the family.

They are among more than 67,000 Palestinians who local health authorities say have been killed by Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Thousands more are believed to be lying dead under the rubble but not counted in the official death toll.

“The war destroyed us all. It destroyed our family, destroyed our homes. It left pain and loss in our hearts,” said Abu Maamar, who is now 38.

Israel launched its offensive for the attack exactly two years ago in which Hamas gunmen burst through border defenses from Gaza, killed about 1,200 people and dragged another 250 back into the enclave as hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will pursue the war until the Palestinian resistance group has been destroyed, and the army has intensified its campaign by pushing again into Gaza City in the north.

The Israeli military says it tries to avoid civilian casualties but strikes at Hamas wherever it sees members of the group emerge, accusing the group of hiding among the civilian population. Hamas denies that.

Life is tough in crowded tent encampment

Abu Maamar and her remaining relatives have fled waves of Israeli bombing and ground incursions several times over the past two years and are now living in a crowded tent encampment on bare sand near the beach.

Conditions are harsh. Sickness is rife. Food and clean water are scarce. Israeli bombardments terrify the traumatised population.

Abu Maamar’s greatest concern is for her nephew Ahmed, the son of Ramez and younger brother of Saly.

Having lost his mother, both sisters and maternal grandparents 10 days into the conflict, he lost his father and paternal grandfather when they were killed while fetching food in June after it had run out the previous day, Abu Maamar said.

“His father would take him around, play with him, take him to the beach, take him around to see his aunts,” Abu Maamar said of her nephew.

“His life really changed now. He’s in the tent 24 hours (each day),” she said.

After his father’s death, Ahmed spent a lot of time with a cat he named Loz. The cat died in August, Abu Maamar said.

Concern that the war is not about to end

When Reuters interviewed Abu Maamar a year ago, she said she was “waiting for the cascade of blood to stop”.

She is still waiting, and fears the latest moves to end the war will fail unless Trump puts more pressure on Israel.

“It is enough for us. What we lost is enough. A lot of our loved ones are gone, we lost them. We left (our homes) with them, and we will return without them,” she said on Sunday.

“My only fear is for the war to continue. We do not want it to continue. We want it to end once and for all.”