BEIRUT: Lebanon said Israeli strikes on Wednesday killed at least nine people in the country’s south, including two paramedics, while another raid hit a car near Beirut.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, said it intercepted a “hostile aircraft” and two projectiles that crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon.
Israeli officials have warned the military will strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, if the group targets northern Israeli communities, a stance they say has backing from Washington.
Hezbollah said its fighters on Wednesday attacked Israeli troops who have invaded southern Lebanon, but the group has not claimed a cross-border attack since Monday.
Israeli and Lebanese diplomats are to hold a second day of direct talks in Washington — the fourth round since the fighting erupted on March 2, when Hezbollah entered the Middle East war on the side of its backer Iran with rocket fire at Israel.
Hezbollah is sharply opposed to the direct negotiations.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said an Israeli strike targeted “a car on the Khaldeh road”.
An AFP correspondent saw an ambulance and onlookers gathering at the strike site, located on the main highway heading south from the capital.
The NNA reported strikes on more than 20 locations in the south, some after Israel’s military warned residents of several villages to evacuate.
The health ministry said an Israeli attack on Al-Hawsh near the city of Tyre killed four Syrians and two Palestinians.
But an Israeli military spokesperson told AFP’s Jerusalem bureau that “we are not aware of any such attack having occurred in the area”.
The health ministry said an Israeli strike elsewhere in the south targeted an ambulance, killing two paramedics from the Risala Scouts Association, which is affiliated with Hezbollah ally the Amal movement.
The ministry circulated images of a badly damaged ambulance, with medical masks spilling out of the vehicle and scattered on the road.
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