Israel-Hizbullah attacks have continued with fresh Israeli air strikes on Lebanon and rockets fired into Israel despite global calls for a truce.
Israel will continue to discuss ceasefire proposals for Lebanon in the days ahead, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Friday, as Washington warned further escalation would only make it harder for civilians on both sides to return home.
Israel’s foreign minister on Thursday rejected global calls for a ceasefire with the Iran-backed Hizbullah group and pressed ahead with air strikes that have killed hundreds in Lebanon and heightened fears of a regional war.
An Israeli strike on Friday killed nine members of a family, including four children, in the Lebanese border town of Shebaa, mayor Mohammad Saab told Reuters. Israeli attacks have killed more than 600 people in Lebanon since Monday, the health ministry says.
Hizbullah said it had fired rockets into Israel on Friday at Kiryat Ata near the city of Haifa some 30km (20 miles) from the border, and the city of Tiberias, declaring the attacks a response to Israel strikes on villages, cities and civilians.
Although Israeli air defences have shot down many of Hizbullah’s rockets, limiting the damage they have done, the group’s attacks have shut down normal life across much of northern Israel.
The Israeli military said it had intercepted four unmanned aircraft that crossed from Lebanese territory into the maritime space off the coast of Rosh Hanikra at the Lebanese border.
The conflict between Israel and the heavily armed Hizbullah is their worst in more than 18 years and part of the spillover that has swept through the Middle East as a result of the Gaza war.
Syrian state media reported that an Israeli air strike on Friday killed five soldiers in Syria, where Israel has intensified a years-long campaign aimed at rolling back the influence of Iran and Hizbullah.
The United States and France proposed on Wednesday an immediate 21-day truce across the Lebanese-Israeli border, and said negotiations continued, including on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York.
Mr Netanyahu said on Friday that Israeli teams had meetings to discuss the US ceasefire proposals on Thursday and would continue discussions in the days ahead, adding that he appreciated the US efforts.
“Our teams met [Sept 26th] to discuss the US initiative and how we can advance the shared goal of returning people safely to their homes. We will continue those discussions in the coming days,” he said in a statement.
On Thursday, after Mr Netanyahu left for New York where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly, his office issued a statement saying the prime minister had ordered Israeli troops to continue fighting with full force in Lebanon.
His statement made no reference to the comments of foreign minister Israel Katz, who on Thursday rejected ceasefire proposals, or other Israeli politicians who have echoed that position, saying only that there had been “a lot of misreporting around the US-led ceasefire initiative”.
Israel says its campaign aims to secure the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced to evacuate areas near the Lebanese border over the last year of hostilities.
Hizbullah began firing at Israel on October 8th as the Gaza war began, declaring solidarity with the Palestinians. Hizbullah has said it will only cease fire when Israel’s Gaza offensive ends.
In Lebanon, more than 90,000 people have been reported as newly displaced this week, according to the UN International Organisation for Migration, adding to more than 111,000 already uprooted by the conflict.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said 30,000 people had crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the last few days, 80 per cent of them Syrians.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken told Israel further escalation would only make it harder for civilians to return home on both sides of the border, the State Department said.
The State Department added Mr Blinken also discussed efforts with Israel to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and steps that Israel needs to take to improve delivery of humanitarian assistance in the enclave where nearly the entire 2.3 million population is displaced and faces a hunger crisis. – Reuters