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AIN YAACOUB, Lebanon — A day after Israeli warplanes flattened their building, Lebanese residents helped rescuers scour the rubble for survivors, still reeling from the rare strike in the country's far north.

The bombing killed at least eight people in Ain Yaacoub, one of the northernmost villages Israel has struck, far from Lebanon's war-ravaged southern border.

"They hit a building where more than 30 people lived without any evacuation warning," said Mustafa Hamza, who lives near the site of the strike. "It's an indescribable massacre."

After nearly a year of steady cross-border fire, Israel intensified its attacks on Hizbollah in September, mainly targeting the Iran-backed group in its strongholds of south Beirut and eastern and southern Lebanon.

Following Monday's strike on Ain Yaacoub, residents joined rescuers, using bare hands to sift through dust and chunks of concrete, hoping to find survivors.

The health ministry said the death toll was expected to rise.

On the ground, people could be seen pulling body parts from the rubble in the morning, following a long night of search operations.

In near-darkness, rescuers had struggled to locate survivors, using mobile phone lights and car headlamps in a remote area where national grid power is scarce.

'People are shocked' 

For years, Syrians fleeing war in their home country, along with more recently displaced Lebanese escaping Israeli strikes, sought refuge in the remote Akkar region near the Syrian border, once seen as a haven.

"The situation is dire. People are shocked," Hamza told AFP. "People from all over the region have come here to try to help recover the victims."

The village, inhabited mostly by Sunni Muslims and Christians, lies far from the strongholds of Hizbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement.

A security source said Monday's air strike targeted a Hizbollah member who had relocated with his family to the building in Ain Yaacoub from south Lebanon.

Local official Rony Al Hage told AFP that it was the northernmost Israeli attack since the full-blown Israel-Hizbollah war erupted in September.

After Israel ramped up its campaign of air raids, it also sent ground troops into south Lebanon.

"The people who were in my house were my uncle, his wife, and my sisters... A Syrian woman and her children who had been living here for 10 years, were also killed," said Hashem Hashem, the son of the building's owner.

His relatives had fled Israel's onslaught on south Lebanon seeking a safe haven in the Akkar region more than a month ago, he said.

Hizbollah operatives

The Israeli war on Lebanon has displaced at least 1.3 million people, nearly 900,000 of them inside the country, the United Nations migration agency says.

Israeli strikes outside Hizbollah strongholds have repeatedly targeted buildings where displaced civilians lived, with Lebanese security officials often telling AFP the targets were Hizbollah operatives.

On Sunday, Lebanon said an Israeli strike killed 23 people, including seven children, in the village of Almat -- a rare strike north of the capital.

Earlier this month, authorities said an Israeli strike on a residential building killed at least 20 people in Barja, a town south of Beirut that is outside Hizbollah's area of influence.

The war erupted after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire, launched by Hizbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

More than 3,240 people have been killed in Lebanon since the clashes began last year, according to the health ministry, with most of the deaths coming since late September.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese state-run media said Israel struck a house in the northern Akkar region on Monday, one of the farthest attacks from the border in its war against Hizbollah militants.

Since September 23, Israel has intensified its air campaign mainly targeting Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon's east, south and south Beirut, rarely targeting the country's north.

"An enemy strike targeted a house in the village of Ain Yaacoub," some 150 kilometres from Israel, said Lebanon's official National News Agency.

Local official Rony Al Hage told AFP that "displaced people lived in the two-storey house" and that it was the northernmost Israeli attack since the full-blown war erupted. After it escalated its air raids, Israel sent ground troops in against Hizbollah in south Lebanon on September 30.

"Rescue and rubble-removing operations are still ongoing," Hage said.

Residents of a nearby village heard a loud explosion and ambulance sirens.

A local Facebook page broadcast a live video feed it said was from the scene of the strike that showed a completely destroyed house, while people removed the rubble with bare hands, using their phones as flashlights.

Lebanon's health ministry earlier said an Israeli strike on the southern town of Saksakiyeh killed at least seven people on Monday.

The Lebanon war erupted after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire, launched by Hizbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. That attack triggered the ongoing Gaza war.

More than 3,240 people have been killed in Lebanon since the cross-border fire began last year, according to Lebanon's health ministry, but most of the deaths have come since late September.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese official media reported an Israeli strike on a house in the main eastern city of Baalbek on Sunday, which was not preceded by an Israeli army evacuation warning.

"Enemy aircraft launched a strike on a house in the Al-Laqees neighbourhood" of the city, the state-run National News Agency said.

Earlier, NNA had reported a rare Israeli strike north of Beirut, on the Shiite-majority village of Almat, which is located in a mostly Christian region.

Overnight and Sunday morning, Israel conducted a series of air strikes on southern and eastern villages and locations, NNA said.

On Saturday, Israeli strikes killed 20 people in eastern Lebanon and 13 in the south, according to health ministry figures.

Israel intensified its air campaign mainly targeting Hizbollah bastions in Lebanon's east and south and in southern Beirut on September 23 and a week later sent in ground troops.

The escalation came after nearly a year of low-intensity, cross-border attacks by Hizbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

More than 3,130 people have been killed in Lebanon since the cross-border exchanges began, according to Lebanon's health ministry, most of them since September 23.

WASHINGTON — US warplanes staged multiple strikes Saturday night on Iran-backed Huthi advanced weapons storage facilities in Yemen, the Pentagon said.

The facilities contained various weapons used to target military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to information provided to AFP by the Pentagon.

The Huthi-run Al Masirah television network reported three American and British raids that targeted the capital Sanaa's southern Al Sabeen district.

"Eyewitnesses said they heard intense flying, along with explosions in different parts of the capital Sanaa," Al Masirah said.

The United States and Britain have repeatedly struck Huthi targets in Yemen since January in response to attacks by the rebels on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The rebels say the strikes, which have disrupted maritime traffic in a globally important waterway, target vessels linked to Israel and are intended to signal solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.

The attacks have seriously disrupted the Red Sea route which carries 12 percent of global trade.

In more than 100 Huthi attacks over nearly a year, four sailors have been killed and two ships have sunk, while one vessel and its crew remain detained since being hijacked last November.

Saturday's strikes come three days after the Huthi's leader Abdul Malik Al Huthi criticised US president-elect Donald Trump for supporting Israel.

Huthi said that normalisation deals between Arab countries and Israel brokered by Trump had failed to bring an end the Middle East conflict and that he would fail again in his second term.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Gaza's civil defence agency on Sunday said 30 people, including 13 children, were killed in two Israeli strikes on two houses in the north of the Palestinian territory.

The first strike early Sunday hit a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza, killing "at least 25" people, including 13 children, and injuring more than 30, the civil defence said.

Since October 6, the Israeli military has been engaged in a withering air and ground assault on areas of northern Gaza, including Jabalia, saying they are seeking to stop Hamas militants from regrouping there.

Another strike on the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed five people, with others still missing in the aftermath.

"A number of civilians are still under the rubble," the agency added.

The war in Gaza erupted with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 43,552 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

DUBAI — Qatar has suspended its role as a key mediator for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal after concluding that Hamas and Israel were unwilling to negotiate "in good faith", a diplomatic source told AFP Saturday.

The Gulf emirate, which has hosted Hamas's political leadership since 2012 with US blessing, has been involved in months of protracted diplomacy aimed at ending the war triggered by the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on Israel last year.

But the talks, also mediated by Cairo and Washington, have repeatedly hit snags since a one-week truce in November 2023 -- the only one so far -- with both sides trading blame for the impasse.

"The Qataris informed both the Israelis and Hamas that as long as there is a refusal to negotiate a deal in good faith, they cannot continue to mediate," said the diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The Qataris conveyed to the US administration that they would be ready to re-engage in mediation when both sides... demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table," the source added.

There was no official confirmation from Qatar or any comment from Egypt and the United States.

With Gaza truce talks at a deadlock, the Hamas political office in Doha "no longer serves its purpose", said the source, without specifying whether Qatar intends to ask leaders of the Palestinian group to leave the country.

During talks over the past year, both Qatari and US officials indicated that Hamas would remain in Doha as long as its presence offered a viable channel of communication.

A senior Hamas official in Doha told AFP that "we have not received any request to leave Qatar".

 'Insufficient willingness' 

Despite last November's truce, when scores of Hamas-held hostages were released, successive rounds of negotiations -- as recently as late last month -- have failed to end the war.

The diplomatic source said Saturday that Qatar had "concluded that there is insufficient willingness from either side" to bridge gaps in negotiations.

A crucial hurdle has been Hamas's insistence that Israel withdraw completely from Gaza, which Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected.

On the ground in the besieged Gaza Strip, the fighting showed no signs of abating Saturday.

The territory's civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including nine at a tent camp in the southern area of Khan Yunis.

Afaf Tafesh told AFP she had lost relatives in that strike.

"We have no food, no water, no place to sleep and we are all the time moving from place to place," she said.

Israel's military said its troops killed "dozens of terrorists" in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation for more than a month.

Visiting Jabalia on Friday, Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi told troops that "we are not stopping or slowing down", vowing "to bring back the hostages, to ensure security" for Israeli communities near the Gaza border, a statement from the military said.

The conflict has expanded to Lebanon, where Israel intensified its air campaign in September and later sent in ground troops after a year of cross-border clashes with Hamas ally Hizbollah.

Hizbollah said Saturday it attacked targets in northern Israel and also downed an Israeli drone over south Lebanon.

Lebanon's health ministry reported at least 20 dead in Israeli strikes on the east of the country and 11 killed in the south, including six rescuers affiliated to Hizbollah and its ally Amal.

The ministry said earlier seven people including two children were killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre on Friday.

More than 2,700 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to ministry figures.

Iran, which backs both Hizbollah and Hamas, warned that the war could spread beyond the Middle East.

"The world should know that in case of the expansion of war... insecurity and instability can spread to other regions, even far away," Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in speech aired on state TV.

TEL AVIV — Israel's airports authority said operations at its main airport near Tel Aviv were not affected after Hizbollah claimed it fired missiles at an Israeli military base nearby on Wednesday.

"Ben Gurion airport is open and operating as normal for takeoffs and landings," the authority's spokeswoman, Liza Dvir, told AFP, adding that the runway had been unaffected.

Lebanon's Hizbollah said it fired missiles at an Israeli military base near the airport on Wednesday, the first such attack in more than a month of war.

In a statement, the Iran-backed group said the salvo of missiles targeted the Tzrifin military base near Ben Gurion International Airport, south of the Israeli commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

Images posted on social media showed smoke rising near the airport while AFP photos from Ben Gurion showed no damage on the tarmac.

The Israeli military did not confirm whether the base had been targeted.

It said that "approximately 10 projectiles crossed from Lebanon" following sirens in northern and central Israel.

"Most of the projectiles were intercepted and one fallen projectile was identified in central Israel," it added.