Region

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces persisted with its offensive against the Gaza Strip, forcing new waves of Palestinian mass displacement.

Clashes have rocked the densely crowded far-southern city of Rafah but also flared again in northern and central Gaza, months after troops and tanks first entered those areas.

The United States has urged Hamas to accept a Gaza truce plan and called on Israel to devise "a strategic endgame" and post-war plan, said White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

This would help Israel avoid "getting mired in a counterinsurgency campaign that never ends and ultimately saps Israel's strength and vitality", Sullivan said on Monday.

Israel last week defied a chorus of warnings — including from top ally Washington which paused a shipment of bombs — and sent tanks and troops into the east of Rafah to pursue fighters.

At the same time, fighting has flared in north Gaza four months after the army said Hamas' command structure there had been dismantled, and six months after defence minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had "lost control" of Gaza.

Recent battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported around Rafah as well as in Gaza City and Jabalia refugee camp in the north and Nuseirat camp in the centre.

More than seven months into the war, Israeli strikes and ground combat claimed another 82 lives in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said.

That is the highest daily toll reported by the ministry in more than two weeks.

Nearly 450,000 Palestinians have been newly displaced from Rafah in recent days, and around 100,000 from northern Gaza, UN agencies said.

That means around a quarter of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million people have been freshly displaced in the past week.

Palestinian mother Hadeel Radwan, 32, who is displaced in western Rafah, told AFP the constant shelling left her terrified while enduring shortages including of drinking water.

Many people had fled her Tal Al Sultan district, but she said joining them would be hard because, “I had a C-section and moving quickly, under threat, would be difficult for me.”

Aid trucks ransacked 

Talks towards a truce and hostage release deal have stalled after months of efforts involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that “unfortunately things didn’t move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate”.

“Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward,” he added of Israel’s insistence on launching a ground attack in the city.

“There is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don’t think that they are considering this as an option... even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire,” Sheikh Mohammed said.

Since Israeli troops moved into eastern Rafah, the aid crossing point from Egypt remains closed and nearby Kerem Abu Salem crossing lacks “safe and logistically viable access”, a UN report said late on Monday.

It said fuel shortages threaten health services, and acute child malnutrition is rising.

A convoy of trucks delivering humanitarian aid from Jordan was attacked and vandalised by Israeli far-right activists on Monday, its cargo spilt onto a road near a crossing with the occupied West Bank.

The United Nations said an Indian member of its security services was killed and another wounded when their UN vehicle was struck on the way to a hospital in Rafah.

Israel’s military said the strike was “under review” and that “an initial inquiry conducted indicates that the vehicle was hit in an area declared an active combat zone”.

The UN said it had informed the Israeli authorities of the movements of the vehicle.

Human Rights Watch said it had identified at least eight occasions since the war began when Israel had targeted known aid worker locations in Gaza, after their coordinates were shared to ensure their protection.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Israel continued with its attack on Gaza on Monday, including in far-southern Rafah, despite US warnings against a full-scale invasion of the crowded city and of the threat of post-war "anarchy" across the Palestinian territory.

AFP correspondents in Gaza reported helicopter strikes and heavy artillery shelling in the east of Rafah, as well as battles in northern Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood.

Israel last week defied a chorus of warnings, including from top ally Washington, and sent tanks and troops into the east of Rafah, the city on the Egyptian border where some 1.4 million Palestinians had sought shelter.

This has sparked an exodus of nearly 360,000 people from Rafah so far, said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, which warned that "no place is safe" in the largely devastated territory.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Washington had not seen any credible Israeli plan to protect civilians in Rafah, and that “we also haven’t seen a plan for what happens the day after this war in Gaza ends”.

“Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” he told NBC.

Fighting has raged in northern Gaza where — months after Israel declared Hamas’s command structure had been dismantled — an Israeli army spokesman said there were “attempts by Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities”.

“The army threw leaflets and sent a message on mobile phones warning everyone to leave Jabalia” refugee camp, said one displaced Palestinian, Umm Adi Nassar, after arriving in Gaza City.

“This is not the first time we have been displaced,” she said. “Every time we try to return and settle, there is an invasion operation, and the army with its airplanes and tanks bombards the houses and kills people.”

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, also said that its fighters were engaged in ground battles in Rafah and Jabalia.

A strike overnight on a house in Rafah killed at least four people, said the city’s Kuwaiti hospital.

Rafah residents on Monday received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, prompting yet more people to leave their homes, witnesses said.

While Israel has vowed to destroy remaining Hamas forces in Rafah, the New York Times cited unnamed US officials as saying that both US and Israeli intelligence suggested the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar was not hiding there.

Sinwar — who has not been seen since the October 7 attack which Israel says he orchestrated — “most likely never left the tunnel network” under southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Yunis, the newspaper said.

Amid the fighting, Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation efforts towards a truce appeared to have stalled.

UN chief Antonio Guterres urged “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid” into Gaza.

Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza have killed at least 35,091 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel’s military says 272 soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground offensive in Gaza on October 27.

The war has displaced most Gazans, many multiple times.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Sunday that Israel’s latest evacuation orders were “forcing people in Rafah to flee anywhere and everywhere”.

Umm Mohammed Al Mughayyir, who has had to move her family seven times to escape the fighting, said: “We have reached a point where we wish for death.”

Residents were told to head to the Al Mawasi “humanitarian zone” on the coast northwest of Rafah, though aid groups have warned it is not ready for an influx of people.

Hisham Adwan, spokesman for the Gaza crossings authority, told AFP on Sunday the Rafah border point with Egypt has remained closed since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side last Tuesday, “preventing the entry of humanitarian aid”.

The health ministry said on Monday that Gaza’s health system was “hours away” from collapse after fighting has blocked fuel shipments.

Israel’s military said on Sunday it had opened a new border crossing into northern Gaza as “part of the effort to increase aid routes”.

TUNIS — Tunisian authorities ordered on Sunday the arrest of two political commentators over critical comments, a lawyer told AFP, a day after security forces stormed the bar association and took a third pundit into custody.

Sonia Dahmani, who is also a lawyer, was arrested late Saturday after criticising the state of Tunisia on television, her attorney Dalila Msaddek said in a post on Facebook.

Msaddek said there was a “police attack against the bar association headquarters” in Tunis, with “lawyers assaulted and the abduction of colleague Sonia Dahmani to an unknown location”.

It came on the same evening that TV and radio presenter Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were arrested for critical comments, lawyer Ghazi Mrabet told AFP.

Mrabet said that the judiciary on Sunday placed the pair under a “48-hour detention warrant and [they] will have to appear before an examining magistrate”.

According to Mrabet, Zeghidi was being pursued “for a social media post in which he supported an arrested journalist”, referring to Mohamed Boughalleb, who was sentenced to six months in prison for defamation of a public official, as well as for “statements made during television shows since February”.

The exact motivation for Bssais’s arrest remains unclear, but according to Mrabet, he was detained under Decree 54 which punishes the production and dissemination of “false news”.

The law, signed by President Kais Saied in September 2022, has been criticised by journalists and opposition figures who say it has been used to stifle dissent.

Since the decree came into force, more than 60 journalists, lawyers and opposition figures have been prosecuted under it, according to the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.

‘Extraordinary country?’

Dahmani was also arrested under Decree 54, Tunisian media reported, saying she was detained while seeking safety at the bar association.

The event was being filmed live by news channel France 24, which said it was forced to stop broadcasting by masked police officers.

The channel said the officers had “torn the camera from its tripod” and briefly detained their cameraman.

It condemned what it said was a “brutal intervention by security forces that prevented journalists from practising their profession as they were covering a lawyers’ protest for justice and in support of freedom of expression”.

The bar association condemned what it described as an “invasion of its headquarters and blatant aggression”, demanding the immediate release of Dahmani and announcing a regional strike starting Monday.

Msaddek said Dahmani was summoned to court on Friday to explain her remarks but refused to appear. A court then issued a warrant ordering law enforcement to bring Dahmani before the investigating judge.

Islam Hamza, another lawyer in Dahmani’s defence team, confirmed to AFP that she had been arrested.

Dahmani told journalists before her arrest that she refused to appear “without knowing the reasons for this summons”.

During a show on the Carthage Plus TV channel on Tuesday, she responded to another pundit’s claim that migrants from sub-Saharan African countries were seeking to settle in Tunisia.

“What extraordinary country are we talking about?” she asked sarcastically, triggering angry reactions from some Tunisian social media users.

The North African country is a key departure point for thousands of migrants who risk the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing each year hoping for a better life in Europe.

But the situation of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia has worsened, particularly after a speech by Saied last year in which he painted “hordes of illegal migrants” as a demographic threat.

On Monday Saadia Mosbah, head of the Mnemty anti-racism association, was taken into custody and investigated over money laundering, Tunisian media said.

Her arrest came just hours after Saied lashed out at organisations that defend the rights of migrants, calling their leaders “traitors and mercenaries” at a national security council meeting.

The president reiterated that Tunisia must not become “a country of transit” for migrants and asylum seekers.

Tunisian authorities have raided several encampments in recent weeks, tearing down tents and expelling migrants.

Saied was elected president in 2019 but has ruled by decree since he orchestrated a sweeping power grab in July 2021.

A demonstration on Sunday in Tunis, organised by the opposition coalition the National Salvation Front to demand “free and fair elections” by the end of the year, drew a crowd of some 300 people, AFP correspondents reported.

The protesters chanted “Stop the police state” and “Down, down with Kais Saied”, the correspondents said.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — Clashes reignited between the Sudanese army and rival paramilitaries earlier this week in the key Darfur town of El-Fasher, the United Nations said on Sunday, killing at least 27 people in one day.

Eyewitnesses have reported air strikes, artillery fire and machine gun clashes battering the city since Friday, when an hours-long battle left an estimated 850 people displaced, according to the UN.

It also killed at least 27 that day, based on what the UN said were "unconfirmed reports", as the city suffers a near-total communications blackout, with medics and human rights defenders barely able to get news to the world.

The fighting has since continued, eyewitnesses said Sunday, reporting air strikes and artillery shelling that left "houses on fire", one resident told AFP.

Since April of last year, Sudan has been in the grips of a devastating war between the army, headed by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The RSF has seized four out of five state capitals in Darfur, a region about the size of France and home to around one quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people.

El Fasher is the last major city in Darfur that is not under paramilitary control. The international community, including the UN and the United States, have for weeks warned against a looming offensive on the city.

A medical source at the El Fasher Southern Hospital — the city’s only functional medical facility — told AFP “the morgue had become completely full of bodies” on Friday.

French medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Saturday that “160 wounded people — including 31 women and 19 children” had arrived at the hospital, which the UN says only has “a 100-bed capacity”.

“During the fighting, the hospital did not have an ambulance to transport the injured people and it has limited medical equipment and medicines needed to treat the injured and no surgical supplies,” the UN said in its Sunday statement.

For weeks, fear has mounted over what the US has called “a disaster of epic proportions” if the warring parties descend on the city in full force.

El Fasher’s erstwhile fragile peace had made it a key hub for displaced people and aid, serving the rest of Darfur, where 1.7 million people are on the brink of famine, according to the UN.

The city itself is home to 1.5 million people, including about 800,000 displaced during this and previous conflicts.

Across Sudan, the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, plunged millions into dire need and uprooted more than 8.7 million people — more than anywhere else in the world.

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — The Israeli military on Saturday ordered Palestinians to leave more areas of eastern Rafah and the northern Gaza Strip as it pressed ahead with its fight against Hamas fighters.

The latest evacuation order, which some residents told AFP they had received via text and audio messages to their phones, comes days after Israeli tanks and troops entered Rafah, the Palestinian territory's southernmost city, and seized a key crossing on the Egyptian border.

Gazans were told to leave parts of Rafah's Shabura refugee camp, the Jenina and Khirbet Al Adas neighbourhoods and other areas, and to move to a designated humanitarian area in Al Mawasi on the coast.

Aid groups and UN officials have warned the area is already overcrowded and not ready to receive an influx of people.

"We're extremely concerned these evacuation orders have come both towards central Rafah and Jabalia," the UN agency for supporting Palestinians, UNRWA, said on social media platform X.

Israeli forces spokesman Avichay Adraee posted the order in Arabic on X, saying these areas had "witnessed Hamas terrorist activities in recent days and weeks".

Images on social media showed leaflets with the latest order, which the army said in a statement it had distributed in the affected areas.

Suhaib Al Hams, a hospital director in Rafah, said in a video message to journalists that "sadly, the Kuwait Speciality Hospital is now included in the places threatened with evacuation".

“There is no other place for patients and injured people to go to but this hospital,” Hams said, urging “immediate international protection” for the medical facility.

The Israeli army on Monday issued its first evacuation order for parts of eastern Rafah, saying it was in preparation for a widely anticipated ground assault.

In a separate statement the military said about 300,000 people had left eastern Rafah for Al Mawasi since it ordered the evacuation.

UNRWA, in its post on X, said the expansion in the new evacuation orders affect another 300,000 people in southern and northern areas of Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly vowed to send ground troops into Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have sought shelter, saying it wants to target four Hamas battalions in the city.

Adraee said evacuation orders were also issued to Palestinians in northern Gaza’s Jabalia and Beit Lahia, areas that saw intense fighting in the early stages of the seven-month war.

“You are in a dangerous combat zone,” Adraee said.

Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted Jabalia and Beit Lahia, as well as other parts of northern Gaza, since the army launched its ground operation in the besieged territory on October 27.

Israel began its Gaza military campaign after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

The Israeli offensive has killed at least 34,943 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

BEIRUT — Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah group said it fired Katyusha rockets at Israel on Friday in retaliation for strikes, which state media said killed two people in the south of the country.

Israel and Hamas ally Hizbollah have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire following the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked war in Gaza.

Hizbollah fighters fired "a salvo of Katyusha rockets" at Israel's north "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks on... civilians, most recently in Tayr Harfa", the group said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the group also claimed rocket attacks on an army barracks in northern Israel.

Earlier Friday, Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) said a first responder from a rescue group affiliated with a Hizbollah-allied movement and a telecoms technician were killed "as a result of the Israeli aggression on Tayr Harfa".

The rescuer belonged to the Risala Scout association, affiliated to Shiite Amal movement, while the technician worked for Power Tec, which undertakes maintenance work for private mobile service provider Touch.

The technician and colleagues from Ogero telecom provider were carrying out “maintenance on the transmission poles”, the NNA said, adding they had sought permission from the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.

The Risala Scout association, which operates in south Lebanon, said the rescuer was killed when his team went to a location that had come under Israeli bombardment.

“The second strike came quickly, and one of the young men was martyred,” a source from the association told AFP.

A source within Touch said the strike hit a team that had been doing maintenance work in Tayr Haifa.

“We lost communications with them because the station was hit,” the source told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

“There were people from our team and from another company that does maintenance work for us, and there were also paramedics,” the source added.

At least 402 people have been killed in Lebanon in seven months of cross-border violence, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 14 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border. Three of the soldiers were killed this week, one of them on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday to grant the Palestinians additional rights in the global body and backed their drive for full membership, which is blocked by the United States.

Israel's UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan reacted angrily to the largely symbolic vote, while Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said it was historic.

With the war in Gaza raging, the Palestinians in April relaunched a request dating back to 2011 to become full members of the United Nations, where their current status is that of a "nonmember observer state".

To succeed, the initiative needed a UN Security Council green light and then a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly.

But the United States — one of five veto-holding members on the Security Council and Israel’s closest ally — blocked it on April 18.

Before Friday’s vote, Palestinian ambassador Mansour said “I have stood hundreds of times before at this podium, but never for a more significant vote than the one about to take place, an historic one.”

“The day will come where Palestine will take its rightful place among the community of free nations,” he added.

The United States opposes any recognition of statehood outside of a bilateral accord between the Palestinians and Israel, whose right-wing government is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution.

US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said after the resolution passed that while “our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood... it remains the US view that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance this goal”.

The resolution gives the Palestinians “additional rights and privileges” starting in the next session of the General Assembly, in September.

 ‘Symbolism is what matters’ 

Richard Gowan, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the move could create “a sort of diplomatic doom loop, with the Assembly repeatedly calling for the Council to grant Palestine membership and the US vetoing it”.

The text explicitly rules out letting the Palestinians be chosen to sit on the Security Council or to vote in the General Assembly.

But it lets them submit proposals and amendments directly, without having to go through another country, as is the case now.

It also gives them the right to be seated among member states in alphabetical order.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 143 to 9 with 25 nations abstaining.

“The symbolism is what matters,” said Gowan. “This resolution is a very clear signal to Israel and the US that it is time to take Palestinian statehood seriously.”

Hamas welcomed the passage of the UN measure, which it called “a reaffirmation of international solidarity with our people.”

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Smoke rose from strikes on Gaza's crowded southern city of Rafah on Thursday after US President Joe Biden vowed to stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons to Israel if a full-scale assault goes ahead.

It was the starkest warning yet from the United States, Israel's main military provider, over the civilian impact of its war against Hamas.

An AFP correspondent and witnesses on Thursday reported Israeli strikes on several parts of Rafah, where the United Nations said 1.4 million people were sheltering.

"The tanks and jets are striking," Tarek Bahlul said on a deserted Rafah street. "Every minute you hear a rocket and you don't know where it will land."

Israel has already defied international objections by sending in tanks and conducting what it called "targeted raids" in eastern Rafah, the city it says is home to Hamas's last remaining battalions.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop some US weapons supplies to Israel if it carried out its long-threatened Rafah assault.

Israel on Thursday called Biden's comments "very disappointing".

Biden told CNN: "If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used... to deal with the cities."

"We're not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used."

The fresh warning came after his administration paused delivery last week of 1,800 2,000-pound (907-kilo) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs as Israel appeared ready to attack Rafah.

"Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs," Biden said. "It's just wrong."

Ties between the allies have become increasingly strained as Biden and other top Washington officials criticise Israel over its conduct of the war.

Pro-Palestinian protests have flared at universities across the United States with an intensity not seen for decades.

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

During their October attack militants seized some 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 who officials say are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,904 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

‘Very disappointing’ 

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 80,000 people have fled Rafah since Monday, but “nowhere is safe”.

On Tuesday, Israel seized Rafah’s border crossing into Egypt, which had been the main entry point for aid.

The White House condemned the aid disruption, and the defence secretary later confirmed Washington had paused the bomb shipment.

In Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s threat, its UN ambassador Gilad Erdan called it a “very disappointing statement”.

“If Israel is restricted from entering an area as important and central as Rafah where there are thousands of terrorists, hostages and leaders of Hamas, how exactly are we supposed to achieve our goals?” he said on public radio.

Israel’s military said on Wednesday it was reopening another aid crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, as well as the Erez crossing into north Gaza.

But it was unclear if aid was entering the territory where, according to the World Food Programme’s chief, famine has already begun.

US aid ship leaves for Gaza 

UNRWA said the Kerem Abu Salem crossing — which Israel shut after a rocket attack killed four soldiers on Sunday — remained closed.

Late Wednesday, the army said a soldier was lightly wounded when rockets again targeted Kerem Abu Salem.

The Hamas authorities’ “emergency committee” in Rafah said on Thursday Israel’s “control of the Rafah crossing and its closure, along with the halt of aid and fuel supplies, threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian, environmental and health catastrophe”.

It dismissed as “nothing but lies” Israel’s description of its Rafah operation as “limited”.

A US container ship loaded with aid for Gaza left Cyprus Thursday in a new test of a maritime corridor to get relief into the besieged Palestinian territory, the Cyprus government said.

US military engineers have been assembling a temporary pier for installation on the Gaza coast to unload maritime aid deliveries but the work has been delayed by heavy seas.

“The platform is expected to be ready by the time the ship arrives in order for the aid to be unloaded and distributed to Palestinians in need,” Cyprus government spokesperson Yiannis Antoniou said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the pier will “significantly increase” the volume of aid reaching Gaza but said it was not a “substitute” for greater land access via Israel.

Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams left Cairo Thursday after what the Egyptian hosts described as a “two-day round” of indirect negotiations on the terms of a Gaza truce, Egypt’s state-linked Al Qahera News reported.

Efforts by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators “are ongoing to bring the two sides’ points of view closer”, the outlet said, citing a high-level Egyptian source.

The talks had begun with some optimism after Hamas announced it had accepted a draft truce plan put to it by Egyptian and Qatari mediators but Israel said the draft was “far” from what it had agreed and there were no further reports of any breakthroughs.

At a makeshift refugee camp in Rafah, Mazen Al Shami said she was fed up.

“We have no money and we don’t have the means to move from one place to another again and again. We have no means at all,” Shami said.

BEIRUT — A Lebanese security source said an Israeli strike on Thursday killed four Hizbollah members, with the Iran-backed group announcing three dead and a drone attack in retaliation, as cross-border hostilities intensify.

Lebanon's powerful Hizbollah movement began attacking Israel in support of ally Hamas a day after the Palestinian fighter group's unprecedented October 7 surprise attack on Israel that sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

The Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said that "four Hizbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle" in south Lebanon's Bafliyeh village, about 15 kilometres from the frontier.

Lebanon's civil defence reported "four martyrs" in an "Israeli air strike" on the main road in Bafliyeh, adding that teams worked to put out the fire that broke out in the vehicle.

Hizbollah later said in separate statements that three of its fighters had been killed, and that it launched "an air attack with explosive drones" targeting an Israeli military base and its vicinity in retaliation.

The group also claimed several other attacks on Israeli positions and troops across the border on Thursday.

The Israeli army said “fighter jets and the Aerial Defence Array successfully intercepted two UAVs [drones] in Lebanese territory”.

It said “several launches were identified crossing from Lebanon”, adding that the military “struck in order to remove a threat in several locations”.

Fighter jets hit “Hizbollah terrorist infrastructure and a military structure” in the Aita Al-Shaab area, it added.

The Iran-backed Shiite Muslim movement has stepped up its attacks in recent weeks, while Israel’s military has struck deeper into Lebanese territory.

At least 399 people have been killed in Lebanon in seven months of cross-border violence, mostly militants but also including more than 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 14 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border. Three of the soldiers were killed this week, one of them on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, Hizbollah said two of its fighters had been killed, while Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said three of its own combatants died on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.