Israel said it attacked as retaliation for Hezbollah rockets that killed a soldier.
A hospital director and three Lebanese security sources reported that Israeli strikes on villages in southern Lebanon killed nine civilians, four of them children, on Wednesday.
Israel said it was retaliating for Hezbollah rockets that killed a soldier. The Israeli military and Hezbollah have been trading fire along the Israel-Lebanon border since more than four months ago, when the Lebanese group fired rockets over the contested border to back its Palestinian ally Hamas.
Two security sources said an Israeli strike killed a woman and her two children in al-Sawana village. Another strike hit a building in Nabatieh, killing a man, three women and two children, according to Hassan Wazni, the director of the town’s hospital, and three other security sources.
Wazni told Reuters that seven more people came to the hospital for treatment after the strike. Security sources and the group said four Hezbollah fighters died in separate strikes.
Hezbollah did not announce any operations on Wednesday. Its executive council head said Israel’s attacks on Lebanese territory on Wednesday “will not go unanswered”.
An Israeli government spokesperson told journalists that one Israeli woman soldier died and eight others were hospitalized from rocket barrages from Lebanon on Wednesday morning.
“Israel does not want a war on two fronts. But we will respond forcefully if provoked,” spokesperson Ilana Stein said.
“The current situation, where tens of thousands of Israelis are displaced and cannot go back to their homes, is intolerable. They should be able to go back home and live in peace and security.”
Stein and Israel’s military said the military had responded to cross-border rocket fire from Lebanon.
Herzi Halevi, Israel’s military chief, met with local municipality heads in northern Israel on Wednesday. He said that even though he saw achievements against Hezbollah, this was “not the time to stop.”
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on TV on Tuesday that his group would stop firing if a full ceasefire was reached for Gaza. “When the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the shooting in the south,” he said.
The cross-border shelling has already killed more than 200 people in Lebanon, including more than 170 Hezbollah fighters, and around a dozen Israeli troops and five Israeli civilians. It has also displaced tens of thousands of people in the border areas of both countries.
