The Lebanese health ministry said 10 Syrians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, which the Israeli military said hit an arms depot belonging to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The casualties from the attack in the Wadi al-Kafour area of Nabatieh were the largest in southern Lebanon since the war in the Gaza Strip began in October, when Hezbollah and Israeli forces engaged in near-daily gun battles across the border.
International mediators are trying to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which diplomats say could help avert a larger war with Lebanon as the front line.
In a statement, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the dead included “a woman and her two children” and that five people were wounded, most of them Syrians.
The state-run Lebanese Press Agency reported that the victims were Syrian refugees and workers.
The Israeli military said on its Telegram channel that its air force struck a Lebanese Hezbollah weapons storage facility last night in the “Nabatier area”, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from the nearest point on the Israeli border.
Following the deaths in Wadi al-Kafur, Hezbollah said it retaliated with a volley of Katyusha rockets in the Ayelet Hashahar area of northern Israel.
The Israeli military said no injuries were reported after around 55 projectiles were fired, but “several fires” were started.
Earlier, the Israeli army said a “missile coming from Lebanon” had injured two soldiers, one of them seriously, in the Misghab Am area, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the north.
Following the consecutive killings in late July of Hezbollah’s chief operational officer in southern Lebanon, Fouad Shukr, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah, Iran and other Iranian-backed groups in the region have blamed Israel and vowed revenge.
Israel said Shukr was killed in an attack in southern Beirut but has not commented directly on the killing of Haniyeh, who was visiting Tehran.
– Shuttle Diplomacy –
Western and Arab diplomats have been milling around the region in an effort to avert a wider conflict.
Mediators on Thursday made a new attempt to push Israel and Hamas towards a ceasefire in Gaza. Talks took place in the Gulf emirate of Qatar and continued into Friday.
Negotiations are expected to resume in Cairo “by the end of next week,” Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators said in a joint statement.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelati expressed hope for “goodwill and political will to reach this urgent agreement” in the Gaza Strip after meeting his Lebanese counterpart Abdalla Bou Habib in Beirut on Friday.
Violence across the Lebanon-Israel border has left 580 people dead in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, which includes the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians were killed, according to military figures.
Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.
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