Israel battles Hezbollah on the ground, intensifies airstrikes in Lebanon

Israel battled Hezbollah in south Lebanon as the air force expanded its bombardment of the country, with the Iran-backed group reporting "point-blank range" fighting and Israel announcing the capture of a fighter.

Israeli warplanes hit a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border on Sunday, Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said.

On Saturday a marketplace in the southern city of Nabatiyeh was hit.

"It's as if an earthquake shook the Nabatiyeh market. It's been destroyed," said resident Tarek Sadaka in disbelief.

There were also deadly strikes on a Shiite Muslim village in a mostly Christian mountain area and another in north Lebanon, the health ministry said.

AFP footage from the northern Deir Billa area showed rescuers and villagers digging through debris left by a strike with their bare hands.

In Kfar Tibnit, the NNA said a strike destroyed a mosque.

"It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it on special occasions," Mayor Fuad Yassin told AFP, adding that the mosque was at least 100 years old.

The health ministry said strikes on three villages on Saturday killed 15 people.

The Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were lightly injured and ambulances destroyed in Sirbin when a house was hit by a second air strike as they searched for casualties.

Israel has alleged that militants use civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza to conduct operations -- a claim the groups have denied.

The Israeli military said its 36th division continued "targeted and limited operational activity" against Hezbollah.

Jets hit "Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities and additional terror targets" and on the ground, soldiers "eliminated dozens of terrorists", it said.

According to the NNA, Israeli forces have "escalated their attacks" on southern Lebanon, with "successive air strikes from midnight until morning" pounding several border villages.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said it clashed with Israeli troops who tried to "infiltrate" twice into a border village, sparking an hour-long battle.

It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in the village of Maroun al-Ras, and that in Blida village, its forces engaged Israeli soldiers "with machine guns at point-blank range".

It also said it launched a salvo of rockets at a "base in southern Haifa" in Israel.

Israel said it intercepted five projectiles after Hezbollah launched around 320 projectiles into Israel over the weekend of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

It also said it struck roughly 280 "terror targets" in Lebanon and Gaza over the same period.

A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel's military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive. 

 'No military solution' 

With no sign of the war easing, UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned against a "catastrophic" regional conflict.

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, told AFP he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral "into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone".

There is "no military solution", Tenenti said.

At least five UN peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israeli forces battle Hezbollah.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told his US counterpart troops would "continue to take measures to avoid harm to UNIFIL troops", his ministry said Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN chief to remove peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm's way, after the force rejected repeated requests to abandon their positions.

Lebanon calls for ceasefire 

Hamas sparked the year-long war in Gaza by launching the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

The number includes hostages killed in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 42,227 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since Israel's military campaign began there. The UN acknowledges these figures to be reliable.

In support of its ally Hamas, Hezbollah started firing into northern Israel in October last year, triggering a near-daily exchange of fire that even before the current escalation had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people.

In September, Israel expanded its focus to Lebanon, with Netanyahu vowing to fight Hezbollah until Israelis displaced by the violence could return to their homes.

Since Israel began a wave of air strikes on targets around Lebanon and sent troops across the border, more than 1,200 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, and a million others have been displaced.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the Lebanon and Gaza wars have so far failed.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a "full and immediate ceasefire".

In a show of support for Hezbollah -- which Tehran arms and finances -- the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Saturday visited the Lebanese capital.

In another high-level contact ahead of Israel's expected retaliation for Iran's October 1 missile attack, Iran's top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, visited Iraq on Sunday.

There, he vowed there would be "no red lines" for Iran in defending its people and interests.

 'Risk of death'  

In Gaza, Israeli forces have focused on an area around Jabalia in the north, with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, saying the fighting is causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there.

"Our brave soldiers are now in the heart of Jabalia, where they are dismantling the Hamas strongholds," Netanyahu said.

Hamas on Sunday condemned what it described as Israel's "criminal military campaign" in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip, many of whom have been uprooted multiple times by the war, were praying for an end to the violence.

"There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north -- everyone is at risk of death," Gaza resident Sami Asliya, 27, told AFP.