Three Lebanese soldiers including an officer were killed, in an Israeli strike during the evacuation of wounded people on the outskirts of the village of Yater in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese Army put out figures of casualties in a statement on Thursday.
The intensifying exchange of fire come as Washington makes
a final major push for peace between Israel and Iran-backed
groups Hezbollah and Hamas before the November 5 U.S. presidential election that could alter U.S. policy.
U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who has travelled to the Middle East regularly during the war, is making his first trip since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, its most wanted enemy.
Washington hopes that his death can provide an impetus for peace.
Washington is also aiming to head off a widening of the conflict in anticipation of Israeli retaliation for an Iranian October 1 missile attack.
Blinken said Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
But the conflict appeared to be spreading, with new strikes around midday on Wednesday on Tyre, a UNESCO-listed port city in south Lebanon, which also came after Israeli evacuation orders.
“We are better off dying with dignity than living on the street,” said Batoum Zalghout, 25, who fled the latest evacuation zone for another part of the city.
Batoum said she had been already displaced with her two children five times.
The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah command and control centres there, including its southern front headquarters.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
In Gaza, where Israel has intensified an assault on the northern edge of the territory since killing the leader of Hamas last week, health authorities and residents reported 42 people killed in fresh Israeli strikes, most in the north.
Among the dead were Mohammed and Bilal Abu Atwi – a driver for U.N. aid agency UNRWA and his brother.
“Our children have become martyrs as they were serving their community and people,” their father Marwan said at the hospital where their bodies were laid out in white plastic bags.
The U.S. has written to Israel, giving it 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza, which has seen almost daily bombardments, or risk having some US military assistance cut.
Arriving in Lebanon for talks on ending hostilities, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said providing arms to Israel posed a dilemma.
“On the one hand, Israel is attacked every day and not supporting it would mean that people are not (being) protected … On the other, it is also Germany’s responsibility to stand up for international humanitarian law.”
In the year since fighters directed by Sinwar rampaged through Israeli towns killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, Israel has laid Gaza to waste to root out Hamas, killing nearly 43,000 Palestinians.
The past month’s strikes on Lebanon have displaced at least 1.2 million Lebanese.
Israel also launched strikes on the Syrian capital Damascus and a military site near the western city of Homs on Thursday, the Syrian defence ministry said, as Antony Blinken toured the region pushing for a halt to fighting.
The Israeli strikes targeted the central Damascus neighbourhood of Kafr Sousa and a military site in the Homs countryside, killing one soldier and injuring seven other people, the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the strikes caused “material damage”, but did not elaborate.
Earlier in the day, Syrian state media said explosions were heard in Damascus after Israel struck a residential building in Kafr Sousa.
Israel typically does not comment on specific reports of strikes in Syria.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria for years, but it has ramped up raids since last year’s October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Israeli strikes pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said it fired precision guided missiles for the first time at Israeli targets.
Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed and five others, including a child, were wounded.
Hezbollah said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had escalated its attacks on Israel, using “precision missiles” for the first time and launched new types of drones on Israeli targets, without offering further details.
The Israeli military said four projectiles were identified as having been fired from Lebanon, two were intercepted and two fell to the ground.
(With inputs from Reuters)
