“Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern Israel killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday (October 31, 2024),” Israeli medics said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since it invaded Lebanon. Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah militants across Lebanon, where health authorities on Thursday (October 31, 2024) reported 24 people killed.

U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as Mr. Biden’s administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the U.S. election next week.

In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals, destroying much-needed supplies that the World Health Organization had delivered to the facility, the U.N. agency said. “The strikes set off a fire that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water tanks, damaged the surgery building and injured four medics trying to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital’s director,” Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a strike on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was harboring Hamas militants. Gaza’s Health Ministry on Thursday (October 31, 2024) condemned Israeli attacks on the hospital and called on the international community to safeguard medical facilities in Gaza.

“Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, killing four Thai workers and an Israeli farmer,” officials said.

Also Read: List of Hezbollah, Hamas leaders Israel has assassinated since October 7, 2023

Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25 rockets from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. “That strike killed a 30-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman while wounding two others,” said Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s (October 31, 2024) rocket fire. Israel’s military said 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday (October 31, 2024).

Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel — and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes — since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s devastating war in the Palestinian enclave.

The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.

In addition to the four Thais killed, another Thai agricultural worker was injured by the rocket fire, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said in social media posts Friday (November 1, 2024). Mr. Maris urged all parties to return to the path of peace in the name of the civilians harmed by the continuing conflict.

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.

Agricultural areas near Israel’s border are closed military zones that can only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining residents, the thump of interceptions by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and wailing air raid sirens punctuate daily life.

Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground operation in southern Lebanon.

“If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden administration) … we will not have it because for us this is rehabilitating Hezbollah again on our borders,” said Eitan Davidi, the mayor of the northern town of Margaliot.

Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday (October 31, 2024), among them 13 people in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency, a day after Israel’s military warned residents there to evacuate.

The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic across the city known for its colossal Roman ruins.

The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours, Israeli bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various parts of the country.

Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the Bekaa Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the main highway “a parking lot” of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.

“Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area,” he said, with most taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in Deir al-Ahmar, families with luggage were still arriving Thursday (October 31, 2024).

“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else.”

Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials about the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Lebanon and to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official familiar with planning for the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The meetings were attended by Mr. Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, Israel’s Foreign Intelligence Agency; and other officials.

But with the U.S. election on Tuesday (October 29, 2024), hopes for immediate progress appeared remote — particularly in Gaza, where Israel has come under criticism for not letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged north.

The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000 earlier this week, Palestinian health officials reported.

The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received 16 bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in Nuseirat refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others, including a medic and two journalists, were wounded.

Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000 and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.

Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies.

A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from near the border.

Firefighters work as they put out a fire at a residential building, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, October 9, 2024
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli emergency responders said two persons were killed on Wednesday (October 9, 2024) in a rocket attack on the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, as the Army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah exchanged fire along the border.

“We found a man and a woman aged around 40 years old, unconscious and injured by shrapnel,” said emergency service provider Magen David Adom in a statement.

“We carried out medical examinations, but their injuries were serious and we had to declare them dead on the spot.”

The incident is the first involving civilian deaths since Israel sent ground troops into southern Lebanon and began targeting Hezbollah positions with regular air strikes on Beirut.

Kiryat Shmona has been declared a closed military zone because of its proximity to the Lebanese border, and is a frequent target of Hezbollah rocket salvos.

The Israeli military said approximately 20 projectile launches were identified crossing from Lebanon after air raid sirens were activated in Kiryat Shmona.

Israel expanded operations in Lebanon nearly a year after Hezbollah began cross-border fire in support of its ally, Hamas, following the Palestinian group’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has vowed to secure its northern border with Lebanon to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah fire to return home.

Hezbollah on Wednesday (October 9, 2024) said its fighters targeted Israeli forces in a south Lebanon border village, shortly after saying Israeli soldiers tried to advance in the area.

Hezbollah fighters “bombed… a gathering of Israeli enemy troops in… Mais al-Jabal with artillery shells”, the Iran-backed group said, after earlier saying that clashes were ongoing after Israeli troops tried to advance in the area “from several directions”.

Dozens of rockets were fired from the blockaded Gaza Strip towards Israel on Saturday, an AFP journalist in the Palestinian territory said, as sirens warning of incoming fire blared in Israel.

The rocket fire was launched from multiple locations in Gaza starting at 06:30 am (0330 GMT), the AFP journalist reported.

The Israeli army warned of sirens across the country’s south and central areas for more than an hour, urging the public to stay near bomb shelters.

The military also said “a number of terrorists have infiltrated into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip,” without providing further information.

A 70-year-old woman was in critical condition and another person was trapped after a rocket hit a building in central Israel, the Magen David Adom emergency services said.

In a separate incident, medics said a 20-year-old man was hurt moderately from shrapnel.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the premier will shortly convene security chiefs over the violence.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket fire.

– Earlier border protests –

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza since 2007 after the Hamas militant group took power.

Palestinian militants and Israel have fought several devastating wars since.

The latest fire follows a period of heightened tensions in September, when Israel closed the border to Gazan workers for two weeks.

The shutdown of the crossing came as Palestinian protest rocked the heavily-militarised border.

Protesters had resorted to burning tyres and throwing rocks and petrol bombs at Israeli troops, who have responded with tear gas and live bullets.

Critics had slammed the border closure as collective punishment against thousands of Palestinian workers, who have far greater earning potential in Israel than Gaza, where unemployment is rife.

Resuming their passage on September 28 had raised hopes of calming the situation in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.

In May, an exchange of Israeli air strikes and Gaza rocket fire resulted in the deaths of 34 Palestinians and one Israeli.

So far this year at least 247 Palestinians, 32 Israelis and two foreigners have been killed in the conflict, including combatants and civilians on both sides, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

The vast majority of fatalities have occurred in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.

There has been a rise in army raids, Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis and Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and their property.

Several far-right Israeli ministers live in settlements in the West Bank, which are deemed illegal under international law.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)