By Aya Iskandarani with Jay Deshmukh in Jerusalem

BEIRUT – Hezbollah said it battled Israeli troops on Monday (14) in south Lebanon and claimed several new attacks on Israel after its deadliest strike since the start of the war.

A drone strike on an Israeli base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday (13) night, while another 60 people were treated for mild to critical injuries, according to the Israeli volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah.

Israeli forces on Monday launched a string of new air strikes on targets in Lebanon, including one in the north of the country which killed at least 18 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.

Israel also faced new criticism over their alleged attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

In a call with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant discussed Sunday night’s drone attack and “the forceful response that would be taken against Hezbollah”, his office said in a statement on Monday.

Just before Sunday’s attack, the Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system known as THAAD and its US military crew to Israel to further boost its allies’ defences against potential Iranian attack.

Israel has vowed to retaliate after two Iranian missile barrages this year.

“There was a huge boom and then suddenly ambulances started driving past, first one, then two, then three and more and more,” Yousef, the manager of a restaurant near the Binyamina base, told AFP, declining to give his full name for safety reasons.

On Monday Iran-backed Hezbollah said its fighters had launched rockets at a naval base near Haifa and were “engaged in violent clashes” in the Lebanese frontier village of Aita al-Shaab where an Israeli troop carrier had been targeted “with a guided missile”.

After almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli forces over the Lebanon border, Israel on September 23 intensified its strikes against targets in Lebanon and sent ground troops across the frontier a week later.

Israel has vowed to secure its northern boundary to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire to safely return home.

Hezbollah says its strikes are in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7 last year, triggering the ongoing Gaza war with Israel.

The Lebanon war, which saw an expansion in fighting and air strikes at the weekend, has killed more than 1,300 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

The International Organization for Migration said last week it had verified 690,000 displaced people in Lebanon

– Body parts –

Israel’s deadly air strike in northern Lebanon on Monday marked a departure from the usual pattern, being located far from the main combat area and in a mostly Christian area.

Israel has focused its firepower mostly on Hezbollah strongholds in Shiite Muslim-majority areas in the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

An AFP photographer at the site of the strike in Aito said it had levelled a residential building at the entrance to the village.

Body parts were scattered in the rubble, with Red Cross volunteers searching for survivors while ambulances evacuated wounded people.

Lebanon’s health ministry said that among dozens of people killed in Israel’s strikes over the weekend were 16 in Maaysra, a Shiite Muslim village in a Christian-majority area north of Beirut.

– ‘No withdrawal’ –

Israel continues to face severe criticism over injuries and damage sustained by the UN peacekeeping force which has been deployed in Lebanon since the first of Israel’s four major ground offensives against its neighbour in 1978.

“An attack against a UN peace mission is not responsible, is not acceptable,” European Union chief Charles Michel said on Friday (11) on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Laos.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the UNIFIL mission to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields”.

Five peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest seeing the UN force accuse Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions.

The Israeli military later said a tank “backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose country is a major troop contributor, said on Monday that there would be “no withdrawal” of the UN peacekeeping force from southern Lebanon.

Under Security Council Resolution 1701, only UNIFIL’s roughly 9,500 troops and Lebanon’s army should be deployed in Lebanon’s south.

– Deadly Gaza strike –

The Hamas attack last year which triggered war in Gaza resulted 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.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, 42,289 people, the majority of civilians. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

Gaza’s civil defence agency late Sunday reported the latest deadly Israeli strike on a school used as a shelter for displaced people.

“The Al-Mufti school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded,” said Gaza civil defence spokesman, Mahmud Bassal.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

With the wars in Lebanon and Gaza showing no sign of abating, fears of an all-out regional conflict have seen Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, engage in diplomatic efforts with allies and other powers.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi movement in Oman, the latest stop in a wide-ranging diplomatic tour of the region.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned of “a regional war that will be costly for everyone,” during a meeting with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Monday.

-AFP