A UN truck passes buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, on October 10, 2024 in Kafra, Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry has reported that a an Israeli airstrike overnight killed five paramedics and rescue workers in the village of Derdghaiya, Lebanon, close to the border with Israel.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday (October 13, 2024) called on the UN chief to move UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon out of “harm’s way”.

Mr. Netanyahu’s appeal to UN chief Antonio Guterres comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, refused to withdraw from the border area despite five of its members being wounded in Israeli fire in recent days.

“Mr Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately,” Netanyahu said in a video statement issued by his office, in what were his first comments on the issue.

Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a cabinet meeting, said Israeli forces had asked UNIFIL several times to leave but it had “met with repeated refusals” that provided a “human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”

“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

“We regret the injuring of UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injuring. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone.”

UNIFIL has refused to leave its positions in southern Lebanon.

“There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP in an interview on Saturday.

Mr. Tenenti said Israel had asked UNIFIL to withdraw from positions “up to five kilometres (three miles) from the Blue Line” separating both countries, but the peacekeepers refused.

That would have included its 29 positions in Lebanon’s south.

UNIFIL, a mission of about 9,500 troops of various nationalities that was created in 1978, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.

Forty nations that contribute to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon said on Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.

“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.

Displaced Palestinians make their way as they flee areas in the northern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli evacuation order, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Gaza City October 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Israeli military on Saturday (October 12, 2024) warned residents of south Lebanon “not to return” to their homes as troops continued fighting Hezbollah militants in the area.

Israeli forces continue to “target Hezbollah posts in or near your villages”, military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. “For your own protection, do not return to your homes until further notice. Do not go south; anyone who goes south may put his life at risk.”

In a separate post, Mr. Adraee reiterated an earlier call for health workers and medical teams in southern Lebanon to avoid using ambulances, claiming they are being used by Hezbollah fighters.

“We call on medical teams to avoid contact with Hezbollah members and not to cooperate with them,” he said.

“The IDF (Israeli military) affirms that the necessary actions will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed individuals, regardless of its type.”

Israel is engaged in a multi-front war as it continues to battle Palestinian militants in Gaza.

In recent days, the military has launched an intense ground and air assault in northern Gaza, particularly in and around the city of Jabalia.

On Saturday (October 12, 2024), Mr. Adraee called on residents of the area around Sheikh Radwan, south of Jabalia refugee camp, to evacuate.

“The specified area, including the shelters within it, is considered a dangerous combat zone,” Mr. Adraee said on X, ordering residents to move to the humanitarian zone in the southern part of the strip.

An Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three on Friday (October 11, 2024), Lebanon’s military said, just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, injuring two of them for the second day in a row.

The incidents entangling both Lebanon’s official Army — which has largely stayed on the sidelines of the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah — and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon raised alarm as Israel broadens its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across the country and a ground invasion at the border.

In central Beirut, rescue workers combed Friday through the rubble of a collapsed building, searching for survivors of an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens in the Lebanese capital the night before.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel over the past year in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 250 taken hostage.

In return, Israel’s military has pounded Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, killing more than 2,237 Lebanese — including Hezbollah fighters, civilians and medical personnel — according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Among them, the Ministry reported late Friday, were a two-year-old and 16-year-old killed by airstrikes in the southern village of Baysarieh.

Hezbollah attacks have killed 29 civilians as well as 39 Israeli soldiers, both in northern Israel since October 2023, and in southern Lebanon since Sept. 30, when Israel launched its ground invasion.

Israel strikes a Lebanese Army checkpoint

On Friday, the Lebanese Army said an Israeli airstrike hit a building near a military checkpoint in the southern Bint Jbeil province.

The Israeli military said it had been targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon when reports emerged that it had hit several Lebanese army soldiers. The Israeli Army said it investigated the incident but remained “unaware of any Lebanese Army facilities found in the area of the strike.”

Lebanon’s Army is not a party to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — after Israel launched its ground invasion on Sept. 30, Lebanese soldiers withdrew some 5 kilometres (3 miles) from their observation posts along the border.

The only direct clash between the two national armies occurred on Oct. 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese Army post also in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier and prompting Lebanese soldiers to return fire.

Both Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in southern Lebanon to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended a bloody monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

But Lebanon’s Army is no match for Hezbollah, and neither its soldiers nor the peacekeepers have been capable of preventing the Shiite militants from entrenching themselves in the border region. Israel accuses Hezbollah of establishing militant infrastructure along the border in violation of the U.N. resolution.

Israel hits U.N. peacekeepers again, wounding two

The Israeli military opened fire near the U.N. headquarters in Lebanon’s southern town of Naqoura on Friday, the Army said, hitting the observation post and injuring two peacekeepers for the second time in as many days.

An initial review by the Israeli Army found that soldiers in southern Lebanon targeted what they believed to be a threat located some 50 metres (yards) from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon but ultimately struck the peacekeepers.

One of the injured peacekeepers was hospitalized in the nearby city of Tyre while the other received medical care on site, the United Nations force, known as UNIFIL, said. Both were identified as Sri Lankan.

The Army repeated its warning that UNIFIL personnel abandon their positions in areas where Hezbollah militants launch rockets into Israel. Following Thursday’s attack, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, said 300 peacekeepers in front-line positions on southern Lebanon’s border were temporarily moved to larger bases.

In a statement condemning the strike as “a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” UNIFIL reported that explosions on Friday hit the same place they did the day before, when Israeli tank fire injured two Indonesian peacekeepers, damaged vehicles and a communication system, and drew sharp international criticism.

“Peacekeepers must be protected by all parties of the conflict, and what has happened is obviously condemnable,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The French Foreign Ministry accused Israel of deliberately firing at peacekeepers and summoned the Israeli ambassador Friday in an official protest.

In a call with his Israeli counterpart, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed the importance of ensuring the safety of UNIFIL forces and urged Israel to “pivot from military operations to a diplomatic pathway as soon as feasible,” the Pentagon said.

When President Joe Biden was questioned by reporters whether he was asking Israel to stop striking U.N. peacekeepers, he replied, “Absolutely, positively.”

UNIFIL, which has more than 10,000 peacekeepers from dozens of countries, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel’s 1978 invasion. The U.N. expanded its mission following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, allowing peacekeepers to patrol a buffer zone set up along the border.

Beirut residents left reeling from Israeli strikes

From the Burj Abi Haidar neighbourhood of central Beirut, civil defence workers dug through concrete and twisted metal from a three-story building brought down by an Israeli airstrike the day before — the deadliest Israeli air raid to hit Beirut over the last year of war.

Thursday’s airstrikes hit two residential buildings in neighbourhoods that have swelled with displaced people fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere in Lebanon.

“The world suddenly turned upside down,” recalled Ahmad al-Khatib, a 42-year-old Lebanese postal worker who was with his wife and toddler daughter in his in-laws’ apartment when the bombs fell on the building next-door.

Al-Khatib said he had pulled his 2 ½-year-old, Ayla, out from under the debris of a collapsed bedroom wall. The force of the explosion had flung his wife, Marwa Hamdan, against a wall and a piece of metal hit her in the head. She remains in intensive care, he said, tears running down his cheeks.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel and Israeli media reported that the strikes aimed to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group, but he was not in either targeted building at the time of the strike. The Israeli military had no comment on the reports.

Another resident, Mohammed Tarhani, said he had moved in with his brother in Burj Abi Haidar after fleeing southern Lebanon to escape airstrikes in the past weeks.

“Where is one supposed to go now?” he asked.

Hezbollah kept up its rocket fire into Israel Friday, setting off air raid sirens just north of Tel Aviv. Interceptions by Israel’s air defense system scattered rocket fragments in the seaside suburb of Herzliya and sent shrapnel flying into a building there, causing damage but no casualties.

While disrupting life for Israelis, most of Hezbollah’s barrages have not caused casualties. But early Friday, an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon killed a man from Thailand working on a farm in northern Israel.

Hezbollah’s chief spokesperson vowed the group would expand its attacks into more populated areas deeper inside Israel.

“This is only the beginning,” Mohammed Afif told reporters from a smouldering street left in ruins by recent Israeli airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “I tell the enemy that you have only seen the minimum.”

Armoured vehicles of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) are pictured during a patrol around Marjayoun in south Lebanon on October 8, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday (October 10, 2024), according to a U.N. source who was not immediately able to specify the type of fire.

The source said one of the locations fired at was UNIFIL’s main base at Naqoura.

There was no official statement from UNIFIL or immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Hezbollah said earlier it had targeted an Israeli tank with guided missiles while it was advancing to the border area of Ras al-Naqoura, before attacking an Israeli force with a missile salvo while the force was trying to pull injured soldiers out of the area.

UNIFIL had said on Sunday (October 6, 2024) that it was “deeply concerned by recent activities” by the Israeli military near a peacekeeper position in southwestern Lebanon.

It did not provide details, but said the activities were dangerous and that it was “unacceptable to compromise the safety of U.N. peacekeepers carrying out their Security Council-mandated tasks”.

In a letter to Israel’s military dated October 3 and seen by Reuters, UNIFIL had objected to Israeli military vehicles and troops positioning themselves “in immediate proximity” to U.N. positions, “thereby endangering the safety and security of UNIFIL personnel and premises”.

Hezbollah has suffered some of the heaviest losses in its history over the past two weeks, chief among them the killing of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike.

Two weeks ago, thousands of communications devices used by Hezbollah members exploded, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000 in an apparent remotely detonated attack that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.

Israel strike LIVE updates – October 4, 2024

The Lebanese militant group has lost nearly 500 fighters since it started attacking Israeli military posts in support of its ally, Hamas, last October. And hundreds more were likely killed in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon over the past week, which has killed a number of high-ranking commanders and officials.

Where Hezbollah stands after its recent losses

Still, Hezbollah has continued to launch rockets at central Israel. The group’s chief spokesman, Mohammed Afif, warned on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) that those attacks were only the beginning and that the militant group is waiting for invading forces to enter Lebanon to confront them.

Iran, which backs Hezbollah, fired dozens of missiles into Israel on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) and referenced Nasrallah’s death in a statement on state television claiming responsibility for the attack. The bombardment came a day after Israel said it had begun limited ground operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s tens of thousands of fighters have been battle-hardened in regional conflicts, including in Syria, where the militant group helped tip the balance of power in the 13-year conflict in favour of President Bashar Assad.

Hezbollah has five main units, each consisting of several thousand fighters.

The Nasr and Aziz units are deployed in areas bordering Israel, with Nasr controlling the south-eastern region including the edge of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. The Aziz unit is deployed in the southwest, including along the Mediterranean coast. Nasr and Aziz commanders were killed in Israeli airstrikes earlier this year but were believed to have been replaced.

The Badr unit is deployed in an area that includes Apple province, a mountainous region overlooking large parts of southern Lebanon that has been a Hezbollah stronghold since the late 1980s. The Haidar unit is in the eastern Bekaa Valley while the Dahiyeh unit is in Beirut’s heavily populated southern suburb that housed the group’s headquarters where Nasrallah was killed Friday.

The group also has the elite Radwan Force of several thousand fighters, part of which is deployed along the border with Israel. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said in a report Monday that invading Israeli troops will get to know the experienced fighters of Radwan Force if they decide to launch a ground invasion.

In recent weeks, Hezbollah has lost some of its most experienced military commanders, including Ibrahim Akil, who was in charge of the Radwan Force, and Ibrahim Kobbeisi, who was the group’s missiles commander.

The commander of Hezbollah’s drones unit, Mohammed Surour, and the commander of Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon, Ali Karaki, were also killed in air strikes.

In late July, Israel killed Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fouad Shukur.

Among the group’s commanders who are still active is Talal Hamieh, who is in charge of Hezbollah’s external operations, and Khodor Nader, who heads the group’s security unit. Hezbollah denied Israeli statements that claimed to have killed senior military commander known as Abu Ali Rida, commander of the Badr unit.

The group’s strongman, Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s maternal cousin, is also alive and widely expected to replace Nasrallah as Hezbollah secretary-general. Safieddine is close to Iran and his son, Rida, is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of an Iranian general who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020.

Hezbollah has an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles as well as surveillance and explosive drones of different types.

Over the past year, Hezbollah has used a small type of guided missile known as Almas, or Diamond, as well as short-range Falaq and Burkan rockets from areas several kilometers (miles) from the border. Over the past week, Hezbollah introduced the middle-range Fadi rockets, attacking the outskirts of Tel Aviv and the northern city of Haifa.

Hezbollah has yet to use all the weapons it is believed to possess, including its precision-guided missiles and surface-to-sea missiles such as the Russian-made Yakhont.

Israeli officials say its bombardment of large swaths of Lebanon over the past week aimed to take out Hezbollah’s supplies of weapons. However, since the escalation began, Hezbollah has continued to launch attacks across the border and even unveiled new types of weapons.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired middle-range Fadi-4 rockets toward the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Hours later, the group said it fired similar rockets toward an air base in a Tel Aviv suburb. The group has used surface-to-air missiles and shot down or chased off Israeli drones on several occasions — including in the past week.

Most of the incoming fire has either been intercepted or landed in open areas. But Israeli military officials warn that the country’s air defenses are not hermetic.

On the streets of Tehran, a small crowd celebrated Iran’s missile attack on Israel while others are worried about the consequences of the Islamic Republic’s boldest move yet in a year of escalating Middle East conflict.

Local media carried footage of what Iran said were 200 missiles as they were fired towards Israel on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) evening, while state television played upbeat music over the images and showed crowds of a few hundred people celebrating the attacks in the capital and other cities across the country.

Also read: ‘Sickening cycle of escalation’ in Mideast must stop, says UN chief Antonio Guterres

They carried Iranian, Palestinian and Lebanese flags, as well as the flag of Iran-allied Hezbollah, alongside portraits of its chief Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli air strike last week, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated in Tehran in July.

The crowd chanted slogans of “Down with America” and “Down with Israel”, while some set fire to Israeli flags.

At a gathering in central Tehran on Wednesday, 22-year-old university student Fatemeh Marzban said she felt “satisfied” with Iran’s retaliation to a series of Israeli blows.

“Last night’s operation made many people on the resistance front happy,” Marzban said, as she thanked Iran’s military for the attack.

But Israel’s vow to avenge the missile attacks, backed by similar threats from the United States, has unsettled some people who fear the country stumbling into a full-blown war through tit-for-tat reactions.

“I am really worried because if Israel wants to take retaliatory measures, it will lead to an expansion of the war,” said Mansour Firouzabadi, a 45-year-old nurse in Tehran. “Everyone is worried about it.”

‘Bolder move’

Analysts see the Iranian missile strike as a consequence of a string of setbacks suffered by Tehran and its strategy of building up allies across the region in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah chief Nasrallah was killed alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Abbas Nilforoushan.

Ali Vaez from the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said Iran took “a calculated risk in April” when it fired missiles and drones at Israel, most of which were intercepted, in its first ever direct attack.

The barrage was ordered after an Israeli air strike on Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus which killed two Iranian generals.

“Now, with an even bolder move [on Tuesday], the regime’s actions reflect the deepening challenges it faces as its most critical partners have been weakened on multiple fronts,” Vaez said.

“Failing to respond might have further eroded its credibility with these allies, giving the impression that Tehran was content to remain passive”, he said.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is due to deliver a rare speech at Friday (October 4, 2024) prayers this week, according to local media, during which he is widely expected to set the tone for the way forward.

The last time Mr. Khamenei led Friday prayers was after Iran launched ballistic missiles on air bases of US forces in Iraq following the 2020 killing of revered Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Speaking at a gathering of Iranian students on Wednesday (October 2, 2024), Mr. Khamenei said he was still in mourning for Nasrallah and that his death was “not a small matter.”

‘Far from over’

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran had refrained from responding to Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran during his inauguration in July, fearing that it could derail US-backed efforts for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

But the promises from the United States and its allies of a “ceasefire in exchange for Iran’s non-reaction to Haniyeh’s killing were completely false,” he said on Sunday.

Israel’s military campaign continues there even as it steps up its war with Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

Following Tuesday’s attack by Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Tehran “made a big mistake tonight and will pay for it,” while the United States warned of “severe consequences”.

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called on Wednesday for a decisive strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps meanwhile threatened a “crushing attack” if Israel responded, and warned against any direct military intervention in support of Israel.

Vaez from the International Crisis Group says while Tehran has signalled “the chapter is closed … the reality is far from that.”

“The final word on this conflict lies, not with Iran, but with Israel and the United States,” he said.

“And if the latest developments in Gaza, Lebanon, and even Yemen’s Huthi movements are any indication, this confrontation is far from over.”

Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanon said 23 people were killed and dozens injured in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Wednesday (September 25, 2024), the third day of major Israeli raids in the country as fighting with Hezbollah has intensified.

Hezbollah earlier said it had fired a ballistic missile that reached the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time before being intercepted.

The attacks in Lebanon included two rare strikes on the villages of Joun and Maaysra — mountain areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in the country’s south and east.

Fatima from Maaysra, declining to provide her surname, said the targeted two-storey building was her relative’s home and housed people displaced from south Lebanon.

“They bombed an area full of displaced people,” she said. “Nowhere is safe anymore.”

An AFP correspondents at the site of the strike saw rescuers searching for survivors in the rubble of the targeted building and listening for any signs of life under the wreckage.

The village was filled with Hezbollah and Lebanese flags, he said.

Israel’s army later said it was conducting strikes in the Nabatiyeh region of south Lebanon, with the state-run National News Agency reporting an Israeli strike had partly damaged a hospital there.

Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told AFP that the region’s “only government hospital sustained damage as a result of the nearby strike”, adding that no one had been injured.

Escalating clashes

The Health Ministry said the Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed four people.

Another Israeli strike killed three people in Maaysra — a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Beirut.

Nine people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south and seven in eastern Lebanon, the ministry said.

Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.

The focus of Israel’s firepower has shifted sharply from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days.

On Monday, Israel launched devastating strikes across Lebanon’s south and east, killing more than 550 people according to the health ministry — the deadliest single-day toll since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The attacks came after coordinated explosions of communication devices killed 39 people and wounded thousands on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.

Those were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.

Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following Israeli strikes, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanon said 23 people were killed and dozens injured in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Wednesday (September 25, 2024), the third day of major Israeli raids in the country as fighting with Hezbollah has intensified.

Hezbollah earlier said it had fired a ballistic missile that reached the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time before being intercepted.

The attacks in Lebanon included two rare strikes on the villages of Joun and Maaysra — mountain areas outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in the country’s south and east.

Fatima from Maaysra, declining to provide her surname, said the targeted two-storey building was her relative’s home and housed people displaced from south Lebanon.

“They bombed an area full of displaced people,” she said. “Nowhere is safe anymore.”

An AFP correspondents at the site of the strike saw rescuers searching for survivors in the rubble of the targeted building and listening for any signs of life under the wreckage.

The village was filled with Hezbollah and Lebanese flags, he said.

Israel’s army later said it was conducting strikes in the Nabatiyeh region of south Lebanon, with the state-run National News Agency reporting an Israeli strike had partly damaged a hospital there.

Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told AFP that the region’s “only government hospital sustained damage as a result of the nearby strike”, adding that no one had been injured.

Escalating clashes

The Health Ministry said the Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed four people.

Another Israeli strike killed three people in Maaysra — a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Beirut.

Nine people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south and seven in eastern Lebanon, the ministry said.

Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.

The focus of Israel’s firepower has shifted sharply from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days.

On Monday, Israel launched devastating strikes across Lebanon’s south and east, killing more than 550 people according to the health ministry — the deadliest single-day toll since Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

The attacks came after coordinated explosions of communication devices killed 39 people and wounded thousands on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.

Those were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil among the dead.