Rockets fired from Lebanon killed two more people in northern Israel on Thursday, Israeli medics said, raising the death toll there to seven in what marked the deadliest strikes to hit Israel since its military invaded southern Lebanon earlier this month.
The attack came as senior US diplomats were in the region to push for cease-fires in Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East in the Biden administration’s final months.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel, and drawing retaliatory strikes, since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies backed by Iran.
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The conflict along the border escalated into a full-blown war last month, when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies. Israeli ground forces pushed into Lebanon at the start of October.
Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organisation, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalised.
The Israeli military said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove where people had gathered for the harvest.
The deadly attack came just hours after local officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that projectiles fired from Lebanon had struck an agricultural area, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer.
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Metula, Israel’s northernmost town which is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides, has suffered heavy damage from rockets. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an organisation that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas along Israel’s border, where much of the country’s orchards are located, are closed military areas that can only be entered with official permission.
Hezbollah’s newly named top leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in a video statement on Wednesday that the militant group will keep fighting Israel until it is offered cease-fire terms it deems acceptable. He said it has recovered from a series of setbacks in recent months, including attacks using explosive pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel.
“Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said.
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Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli military warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, as airstrikes in different parts of the country killed eight people, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.
Israel has warned people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced since the escalation in September.
Thousands of people have fled from Baalbek, the main city in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, and surrounding areas after Israeli evacuation warnings and aerial bombardment on Wednesday.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region, some 17 kilometres to the south-east, said the main highway “turned into a parking lot”. He said about 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, with most being hosted in private homes.
At one of the shelters, families with luggage were still arriving on Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing —no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”
More than 2800 people have been killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Lebanon since the conflict began last year, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
In Israel, rockets, missiles, and drones launched by Hezbollah have killed at least 68 people, about half of them soldiers. More than 60,000 Israelis from towns and cities along the border have been evacuated from their homes for more than a year.
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