Eight soldiers killed in clashes with Hizbollah in Lebanon, says Israel

Israel's ground incursion into Lebanon to battle Hizbollah left eight Israeli soldiers dead on Wednesday, while the region braced for further escalation as Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier.

The Israeli military said seven soldiers were killed in two separate attacks, without elaborating. The assaults were among the deadliest against Israeli forces in months.

Another seven troops, including a combat medic, were wounded. Earlier, the military had announced that a 22-year-old captain in a commando brigade was killed in Lebanon, the first Israeli combat death since the start of the incursion.

Hizbollah said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in two places inside Lebanon near the border.

Israeli media reported infantry and tank units operating in southern Lebanon after the military sent thousands of additional troops and artillery to the border.

Hizbollah said its fighters wounded and killed a group of Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon after detonating an explosive device, but did not elaborate on the number of dead and wounded.

The two attacks announced on Wednesday followed other assaults on Israeli forces earlier in the year. In June, an explosion in southern Gaza killed eight Israeli soldiers. In Jan. 21 Israeli troops were killed in a single attack by Palestinians in central Gaza. the deadliest single attack on Israeli forces since Israel-Hamas war erupted.

The Lebanese army said Israeli forces advanced some 400 meters across the border and withdrew "after a short period,” 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 kilometers from the border and much farther than the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hizbollah after their 2006 war. Hundreds of thousands have already fled their homes as the conflict has intensified.

Israel has said it will continue to strike Hizbollah until it is safe for tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from homes near the Lebanon border to return. Hizbollah has vowed to keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza with Hamas.

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.

In Gaza, where the nearly yearlong war that triggered the widening conflict rages on 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.

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.

Associated Press