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Several Lebanese civilians were killed on Wednesday as Israel retaliated with air strikes for a suspected Hizbollah rocket barrage that had earlier killed an Israeli soldier and injured several others.
A woman and her two children were killed when shelling struck her home in the village of al-Sawaneh, Lebanon’s National News Agency said. More than 10 people were also hurt, according to local authorities who said the damage was “immense”.
A later strike on a residential building in the southern city of Nabatiyeh killed several more civilians, with others wounded, local media reported. According to Reuters, six were killed, including two more children, three women and a man, with seven others taken to hospital. Footage circulating on social media showed rescue workers at the scene of a badly damaged building, with smoke still rising. This is the second time the city has been struck since October 8.
Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group, said three of its fighters were killed in separate airstrikes on Wednesday.
The earlier suspected Hizbollah barrage had targeted an Israeli military base in Safed, about 20km from the border, the deepest that any of its rockets has penetrated Israeli territory in recent weeks.
The Israeli military identified a 20-year-old female staff sergeant as having been killed. At least eight others, said by Israeli media to be soldiers, were also wounded but an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson did not reply to messages seeking confirmation of this.
The incidents came amid an uptick in crossfire between Israel’s military and Hizbollah, which have engaged in tit-for-tat attacks since the war between Hamas and Israel erupted on October 7.
Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, told the mayors of towns close to the Lebanon border that “this is not the point to stop. There is still a long way to go.”
“The next campaign will have a very strong offensive and we will use all our tools and capabilities,” he said.
The almost daily clashes, and targeted assassinations by Israel of senior figures in Hamas and Hizbollah, have fuelled concerns of a broader regional conflagration, and led to the mass evacuation of civilians on both sides of the frontier.
Those fears have sharpened in recent weeks as assaults on both sides have become more brazen. Over the weekend, an Israeli strike hit the town of Jadra, 30km south of the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The fighting has killed more than 200 people in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters, as well as several Israeli troops and some Israeli civilians.
Israel’s military said on Wednesday it had identified “numerous launches” over the border, including strikes on a military base, without identifying which one. Safed is home to Israel’s northern command.
Hizbollah did not claim the attack on Wednesday, but a senior figure in the group said Israel’s strikes “cannot pass without a response”.
The cross-border fire came the day after Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised address, in which he reiterated that his group would not stop its attacks on Israel until a complete ceasefire had been agreed in Gaza.
“When the war on Gaza ends, we will stop our offensive,” Nasrallah said. “If the enemy resumes its hostilities, we will act,” adding that Israeli civilians, to whom he referred as “settlers”, would not be able to return to their homes near the border until then.
Attempts by western governments, led by US special envoy Amos Hochstein, to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah have stalled, as the militant group has broadly rejected attempts to negotiate in the absence of a Gaza ceasefire.
Nasrallah criticised those western efforts in his address, saying the western negotiators had not taken into account Lebanon’s interests, only Israel’s.
“These delegations have only one goal: to ensure Israel’s security, its protection, and the end of fire towards Israeli territory,” he said. “Their priority is Israel’s security . . . they suggest no compromises.”
