DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA STRIP -- Israel battled militants on two fronts Wednesday, pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah that left eight Israeli soldiers dead and conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children. As Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran鈥檚 ballistic missile attack a day earlier, the region braced for further escalation.
Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and the Hamas militants who run the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, launched dozens of missiles into Israel on Tuesday night, a sharp escalation that pushed the Middle East closer toward a regional war. Israel warned that the attack would have 鈥渞epercussions.鈥�
The Israeli military said seven soldiers were killed in two separate attacks in southern Lebanon, without elaborating. Those deaths followed an earlier announcement of the first Israeli combat death in Lebanon since the start of the incursion 鈥� a 22-year-old captain in a commando brigade. Another seven troops were wounded.
Together, the assaults announced on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, were some of the deadliest against Israeli forces in months.
In Gaza, where the nearly yearlong war that triggered the widening conflict rages with no end in sight, Israeli ground and air operations in a hard-hit city killed at least 51 people, including women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.
Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas鈥� Oct. 7 attack ignited the war.
The escalation on multiple fronts has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East that could further draw in Iran as well as the United States, which has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
Syria's state-run SANA news agency said an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Damascus Wednesday evening, killing three people and wounding at least three others. An Associated Press journalist at the scene said the missile appeared to have targeted the bottom floor of a four-story apartment building.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which frequently hits targets linked to Iran or allied groups in Syria, but rarely claims the strikes.
Hezbollah says its fighters clashed with Israeli troops
Hezbollah, widely seen as the most powerful armed group in the region, said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in two places inside Lebanon near the border. The Israeli military said ground forces backed by airstrikes killed militants in 鈥渃lose-range engagements,鈥� without saying where.
Israeli media reported infantry and tank units operating in southern Lebanon after the military sent thousands of additional troops and artillery to the border.
The two attacks announced Wednesday followed other assaults on Israeli forces earlier in the year. In June, an explosion in southern Gaza killed eight Israeli soldiers. In January, 21 Israeli troops were killed in a single attack by Palestinian militants in central Gaza. the deadliest single attack on Israeli forces since Israel-Hamas war erupted.
The Lebanese army said Israeli forces advanced some 400 metres (yards) across the border and withdrew 鈥渁fter a short period,鈥� its first confirmation of the incursion.
The Israeli military has warned people in and around 50 villages and towns to evacuate north of the Awali River, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the border and much farther than the northern edge of a UN-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war. Hundreds of thousands have already fled their homes.
Israel has said it will continue striking Hezbollah until it is safe for tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from homes near the Lebanon border to return. Hezbollah has vowed to keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
Israeli strikes have killed over 1,000 people in Lebanon over the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, Israel lashed out at the United Nations, declaring Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata, or banned from entering the country. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused him of failing to unequivocally condemn Tuesday night's Iranian missile attack.
Guterres released a brief statement after the barrage saying: 鈥淚 condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire.鈥�
The move deepens an already wide rift between Israel and the United Nations.
Palestinians describe massive raid in Gaza
The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 51 people were killed and 82 wounded in the operation in Khan Younis that began early Wednesday. Records at the European Hospital show that seven women and 12 children, as young as 22 months old, were among those killed.
Another 23 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Residents said Israel had carried out heavy airstrikes as its ground forces staged an incursion into three neighbourhoods in Khan Younis. Mahmoud al-Razd, a resident who said four relatives were killed in the raids, described heavy destruction and said first responders had struggled to reach destroyed homes.
"The explosions and shelling were massive," he told The Associated Press. "Many people are thought to be under the rubble, and no one can retrieve them."
Israel carried out a weekslong offensive earlier this year in Khan Younis that left much of Gaza's second largest city in ruins. Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas of Gaza where they have previously fought Hamas and other armed groups as the militants have regrouped.
On Oct. 7, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage. Some 100 have not yet been released, around 65 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say a little more than half were women and children. The military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Iran fires missiles to avenge attacks on militant allies
Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel has landed in recent weeks against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began.
Israelis scrambled for bomb shelters as air raid sirens sounded and the orange glow of missiles streaked across the night sky.
The Israeli military said it intercepted many of the incoming Iranian missiles, though some landed in central and southern Israel and two people were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
Several missiles landed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where one of them killed a Palestinian worker from Gaza who had been stranded in the territory since the war broke out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate against Iran, which he said "made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it."
U.S. President Joe Biden said his administration is "fully supportive" of Israel and that he's in "active discussion" with aides about what the appropriate response should be.
Iran said it would respond to any violation of its sovereignty with even heavier strikes on Israeli infrastructure.
Iran said it fired Tuesday's missiles as retaliation for attacks that killed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and its own paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. It referenced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, both killed in an Israeli airstrike last week in Beirut. It also mentioned Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader in Hamas who was assassinated in Tehran in a suspected Israeli attack in July.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed.
