Israel strikes Hezbollah deep in Lebanon igniting fears of a regional war as fresh attacks claim lives on both sides

Escalation comes after Hezbollah rockets kill soldier in north area not previously hit by the war

ISRAELI fighter jets launched the deepest air strikes yet on Lebanon, reigniting fears of regional war.

The series of deadly attacks, amid months of sporadic cross-border exchange of fire, came after rockets from Hezbollah killed a female soldier in a town in northern Israel not previously affected by the border clashes.

The missile strikes also left civilians dead and injured on the Lebanese side of the border.

The exchanges started yesterday morning with a salvo of Hezbollah rockets on Safed, a town in northern Israel that hosts a major military base.

A 20-year-old staff sergeant was killed and eight more people were injured as 20 rockets targeted Safed and other areas in the north, according to first responders.

Safed, which is nine miles from the Lebanese border and hosts an important IDF base, has largely been unaffected by exchange of fire between

Israel and Hezbollah since Hamas’s Oct 7 attack on Israel. The escalation by the Iranian-backed group came just a few days after Iran’s foreign minister visited Lebanon for talks, and a day after Hezbollah’s leader vowed to continue rocket attacks until the war in Gaza stops.

Iran previously praised Hezbollah’s “resistance” against Israel, but insisted it had no control over its allies.

The IDF yesterday responded by targeting a dozen villages deep in southern Lebanon, including 18miles from the border, departing from a previous tactic of only hitting Hezbollah assets close to the border.

At least four people including a woman and her two children were killed and 11 wounded in Israeli air strikes on two towns in the south, Lebanon’s civil defence said.

Benny Gantz, an opposition leader-turned-member of the coalition government, said yesterday the Lebanese government is “also responsible” for the attack and promised to respond “with force”.

Yesterday’s attack emboldened local officials and right-wing politicians to renew their calls for the Israeli government to mount an offensive against Hezbollah. Moshe Davidovich, head of a regional council in northern Israel, told the Walla news website Israel should “wake up to the threat”.

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s hard-right national security minister, yesterday urged the government to respond in kind. “This is not a trickle (of rockets), it’s a war,” he said on Twitter.

Channel 12 reported that Mr Ben Gvir has requested an urgent meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to discuss the flare-up in the north. Shuki Ohana, the mayor of Safed, lamented yesterday that the city has not been included in the evacuation orders. “We are in a dangerous area in which strategic assets are located,” he told Kan Radio.

He said that many of the local schools are not fortified and that a teacher had to take children outside this morning and tell them to lie on the pavement.

“When a kindergarten teacher cannot protect her children, that is not normal,” he said. Hezbollah head, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised address on Tuesday that his group would only stop its exchanges of fire if a full ceasefire was reached for Gaza.

“On that day, 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, as well as around a dozen Israeli troops and some civilians.

It has also displaced tens of thousands of people in the border areas of each country. Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, later yesterday met with mayors and local leaders from northern Israel, telling them there is no immediate solution.

The chiefs of the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies visited the Egyptian capital on Tuesday for negotiations also attended by CIA director Bill Burns.

But yesterday the Israeli prime minister said the negotiations would not extend to a further meeting today.

“In Cairo, Israel was not given any new proposal by Hamas for the release of our hostages,” a statement from his office said, adding that “Israel will not submit to the delusional demands of Hamas. This is not the point to stop. There is still a long way to go and we will walk it together.”

♦ The US state department is investigating Israeli air strikes in Gaza and allegations that the IDF used white phosphorus in Lebanon, according to reports.

‘Israel will not submit to delusional demands. This is not the point to stop. There is a long way to go’