Beirut:

Nine individuals, seven of them civilians, had been killed on Wednesday in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon, official sources mentioned, whereas the Israeli military mentioned it misplaced a soldier in cross-border rocket hearth.

While the rocket assault was not instantly claimed, the exchanges of fireside — and the worst single-day civilian dying quantity in Lebanon since cross-border hostilities started in October — raised fears of a broader battle between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.

On Wednesday night, 4 civilians from the identical household “including two women” had been killed in an Israeli strike on a residential constructing within the metropolis of Nabatiyeh, a Lebanese safety supply advised AFP.

(*9*) added the supply, requesting anonymity as they weren’t authorised to talk to the media.

Earlier, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) mentioned Israeli warplanes focused a home in south Lebanon’s Sawwaneh, killing three members of the identical household, figuring out them as a Syrian girl and her youngster, aged two, and stepchild, 13.

The company mentioned one other Israeli assault concentrating on the village of Adshit killed one particular person, whom Hezbollah introduced was certainly one of its fighters, and wounded 10 others, destroying a constructing and inflicting important harm close by.

The Israeli military mentioned in an announcement that Sergeant Omer Sarah Benjo, 20, was killed “as a result of a (rocket) launch carried out from Lebanese territory on a base in northern Israel”.

Fighter jets struck a sequence of “Hezbollah terror targets” in a number of areas of south Lebanon together with Adshit and Sawwaneh, the army mentioned.

The Israeli army and the Iran-backed Lebanese group have been buying and selling close to each day cross-border hearth for the reason that Israel-Hamas battle started in October.

Hezbollah mentioned a second fighter was killed elsewhere in south Lebanon on Wednesday, however claimed no assaults on Israeli troops or positions.

– ‘Heavy value’ –

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service had mentioned seven individuals had been wounded in hearth from Lebanon, 5 of them within the city of Safed.

An AFP photographer noticed medics and troops evacuating a wounded particular person by army helicopter from Safed’s Ziv hospital.

Israeli military chief Herzi Halevi mentioned after assembly commanders close to the Lebanese border that Israel’s “next campaign will be very much on the offensive, and we will use all the tools and all capabilities”.

“We are intensifying the strikes all the time, and Hezbollah are paying an increasingly heavy price,” he mentioned in an announcement.

Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine on Wednesday mentioned that “this aggression… will not go unanswered”.

A day earlier, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah mentioned that fireside from southern Lebanon would finish “when the attack on Gaza stops and there is a ceasefire” between the group’s Palestinian allies Hamas and arch-foe Israel.

“If they (Israel) broaden the confrontation, we will do the same,” Nasrallah warned.

Tens of hundreds of individuals have been displaced on either side of the Israel-Lebanon border amid hovering regional tensions.

Fears have been rising of one other full-blown battle between Israel and Hezbollah, who final went to battle in 2006.

– ‘Diplomatic path’ –

The UN secretary-general’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric warned that “the recent escalation is dangerous indeed and should stop.”

Peacekeepers from the United Nations mission in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, had seen “a concerning shift in the exchanges of fire between the Israeli armed forces and armed groups in Lebanon”, he added.

The assaults included the “targeting of areas far from the Blue Line”, he mentioned, referring to the withdrawal line demarcated by the UN in 2000 after Israeli troops pulled out of southern Lebanon.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller mentioned that Washington would proceed to push for a “diplomatic path” to resolve the cross-border tensions.

“One of our primary objectives from the outset of this conflict is to see that it not be widened,” he added.

The cross-border violence has killed no less than 253 individuals on the Lebanese aspect, most of them Hezbollah fighters but additionally together with 37 civilians, in line with an AFP tally.

On the Israeli aspect, 10 troopers and 6 civilians have been killed, in line with the Israeli military.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)