As Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran's ballistic missile attack a day earlier, the region braced for further escalation.
Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and the Hamas militants who run the Gaza Strip, launched dozens of missiles into Israel on Tuesday night, another escalation in a tit-for-tat cycle pushing the Middle East closer to a regional war. Israel warned that the attack would have "repercussions".
Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. (AP PHOTO)
The Israeli military said seven soldiers were killed in two Hezbollah attacks in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, without elaborating. The deaths followed an earlier announcement of the first Israeli combat death in Lebanon since the start of the incursion - a 22-year-old captain in a commando brigade. Another seven troops were wounded.
Together, the deaths announced on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, were some of the biggest casualties sustained by 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 the territory's second-largest city of Khan Younis killed at least 51 people, including women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.
And late on Wednesday night, an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building near the Lebanese capital's city centre, the second time Israel has struck central Beirut this week. At least six people were killed and seven wounded in the residential Bashoura district.
Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following the attack, and Lebanon's state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using internationally banned phosphorous bombs.
Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in conflict-hit southern Lebanon.
The latest actions on multiple fronts have raised fears of a wider conflict that could draw in Iran as well as the United States, which has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
Meanwhile, Syria's state-run SANA news agency said an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Damascus on 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 "close-range engagements", 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.
More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliation against Hamas in Gaza. (AP PHOTO)
On October 7, Hamas-led militants killed some 1200 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 more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between fighters and civilians but says more than half were women and children. The military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel landed recently against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began in solidarity with Hamas.
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. Several landed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, killing a Palestinian man.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate, saying Iran "made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it".
US President Joe Biden said his administration is "fully supportive" of Israel and that he's discussing with aides what the appropriate response should be.
Iran said it fired the missiles as retaliation for attacks that killed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and its own paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
