At Least 9 Dead In Israeli Strike

Lebanon's health ministry said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon killed nine people, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Hezbollah movement.

The toll from the strike in the Nabatieh area included "a woman and her two children" and left five other people wounded, two critically, Lebanon's health ministry said in a statement.

Israel's military, on its Telegram channel, said the air force had struck a weapons storage facility of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement overnight "in the area of Nabatieh", which is about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the nearest point of the Israeli border.

Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged near-daily fire over their border since war in the Gaza Strip began last October between Palestinian Hamas militants and Israeli forces.

The latest incident comes alongside fears of a wider regional war, which international mediators have been trying to avert through talks on a truce in Gaza.

Previously, at least six people were killed and three others were wounded by an Israeli strike on a residential building in Nabatieh city, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry said early on Saturday.

Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks, after a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that Israel blamed on Hezbollah. Israel responded with the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in the suburbs of Beirut.

Hezbollah has also vowed to retaliate against Israel, as has Iran, for the killing in Tehran of the political chief of the Palestinian Hamas group, Ismail Haniyeh.