The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israel attacked a residential building in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh.
At least six people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
The Health Ministry said early Saturday that three people were also seriously injured in the latest attack by Israeli forces.
Lebanese media reported a higher death toll of eight people in the attack, but that figure could not be independently verified.
The Israeli military, which regularly releases updates on its air force and artillery strikes against Lebanon, has yet to comment on the attack. Earlier, the military had posted on social media that its warplanes had targeted “military buildings” in the villages of Maroun al-Ras and Aita al-Shaab, which are more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of the town of Nabatieh.
The attacks come as the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has been exchanging fire almost daily with Israeli forces in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian group's Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza.
According to a death toll by the AFP news agency, cross-border clashes since October have left Israeli forces in Lebanon dead at least 570 people, most of them Hezbollah members, but also at least 118 civilians. Israel has attacked Lebanon more than 6,500 times during the same period, according to the news agency.
On the Israeli side, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Tensions have soared after a deadly rocket attack in July killed at least 12 people, many of them children, in a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel blamed on Hezbollah, as well as Israel's killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in a rocket strike in the suburbs of Beirut.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate, as has Iran, for the killing in Tehran of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel's killings and threats of retaliation have raised fears of a major regional escalation.
Since the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the pro-Iranian armed group has increased its military strength, according to analysts.
On Friday, Hezbollah released a video that appears to show its fighters transporting large missiles through tunnels in an underground facility in what appears to be Lebanon.
Riad Kahwaji, director of the Near East and Gulf Institute for Military Analysis, a security consultancy, said it was the “most explicit video Hezbollah has ever released, showing the size of its tunnels” and its weapons arsenal. Hezbollah likely released the video to “deter” Israel from launching a major operation against it in Lebanon, he said.
Hezbollah has repeatedly said that only a ceasefire agreement in Gaza will stop its attacks on Israeli forces in northern Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is “prepared both defensively and offensively” and “determined” to defend itself against both Hezbollah and Iran.
But pressure has mounted on Israel to agree to a ceasefire deal in Gaza, which would likely avert a wider war involving Lebanon and Tehran.
