By James Mackenzie and Timour Azhari
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israel will press on with discussions on ceasefire proposals for Lebanon in the days ahead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, but after an intense week of fighting the two sides kept up cross-border fire, killing at least 25 in Lebanon.
Israel’s foreign minister on Thursday rejected global calls for a ceasefire with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and continued airstrikes that have killed hundreds of people in Lebanon and heightened fears of a regional war.
Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said the death toll in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the early hours of Friday was 25. One attack killed nine members of a family, including four children, in the border town of Shebaa, mayor Mohammad Saab told Reuters.
More than 700 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli attacks since Monday, according to a tally of official tolls.
“The shops behind us were hit,” said 13-year-old Syrian Abdallah Tawfik Al-Hamid, lying in a hospital bed in southern Lebanon following an airstrike. “The young boy who was with me was martyred (killed), and I’m still alive.”
Hezbollah said it had fired rockets into Israel on Friday at Kiryat Ata near the city of Haifa some 30 km (20 miles) from the border, and at the city of Tiberias, declaring the attacks a response to Israeli strikes on villages, cities and civilians.
Though Israeli air defences have shot down many of Hezbollah’s rockets, limiting damage, the attacks have displaced tens of thousands and shut down normal life across much of northern Israel as more areas fall into its crosshairs.
Israel’s military said it had intercepted four unmanned aircraft that crossed from Lebanese territory into the maritime space off the coast of Rosh Hanikra at the Lebanese border.
Amichai Susson, a 19-year-old volunteer paramedic in northern Israel, said the past week had been “intense”, adding that “there still isn’t enough ambulances to get to every rocket fall, every single time, as quick as possible.”
CEASEFIRE PROPOSALS
The conflict between Israel and the heavily armed Hezbollah is at its fiercest in more than 18 years, part of the spillover that has swept through the Middle East as a result of the Gaza war.
Demonstrating the conflict’s widening reach, Syrian state media reported that an Israeli airstrike on Friday killed five soldiers in Syria, where Israel has intensified a years-long campaign to roll back the influence of Iran and Hezbollah.
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Netanyahu said Israel was defending itself against Tehran on seven fronts. “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East,” he said.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they had targeted the Israeli coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Ashkelon with a ballistic missile and a drone in support of Gaza and Lebanon. The Israeli army said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.
The United States and France proposed on Wednesday an immediate 21-day truce across the Lebanese-Israeli border, and said negotiations continued, including on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting in New York.
Netanyahu said Israeli teams had meetings to discuss the U.S. ceasefire proposals on Thursday and would continue in the days ahead, adding that he appreciated the U.S. efforts.
“Our teams met to discuss the U.S. initiative and how we can advance the shared goal of returning people safely to their homes. We will continue those discussions in the coming days,” he said in a statement.
On Thursday, after Netanyahu left for New York, his office issued a statement saying the prime minister had ordered Israeli troops to continue fighting with full force in Lebanon.
His statement made no reference to the comments of Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who on Thursday rejected ceasefire proposals, or other Israeli politicians who have echoed that position, saying only that there had been “a lot of misreporting around the U.S.-led ceasefire initiative”.
GAZA SOLIDARITY
Israel says its campaign aims to secure the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced to evacuate areas near the Lebanese border over a year of hostilities.
Hezbollah began firing at Israel on Oct. 8 as the Gaza war began, declaring solidarity with the Palestinians. Hezbollah has said it will only cease fire when Israel’s Gaza offensive ends.
In Lebanon, more than 90,000 people have been reported as newly displaced this week, according to the United Nations, adding to more than 111,000 already uprooted by the conflict.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 30,000 people had crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the last few days, 80% of them Syrians. Well over a million Syrians fled to Lebanon during the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel further escalation would only make it harder for civilians to return home on both sides of the border, the State Department said.
“He underscored that further escalation of the conflict will only make that objective (of civilian return) more difficult.”
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut; Jana Choukeir and Nadine Awadalla in Dubai; writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Ros Russell, Timothy Heritage and Sharon Singleton)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.