BEIRUT — Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon to battle Hezbollah militants left eight Israeli soldiers dead 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. Those 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, including a combat medic, were wounded.
Together, the assaults were some of the deadliest against Israeli forces in months. The announcements came on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
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’ 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 — which backs Hezbollah and Hamas — 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 strikes 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.
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.
Hezbollah also said it fired surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli military helicopter over Beit Hillel in northern Israel near the border. The group did not say whether the helicopter was hit, and there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The Lebanese army said Israeli forces advanced some 400 meters (yards) 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 (37 miles) 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 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 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.
Meanwhile, Israel lashed out at the United Nations on Wednesday, 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 that read: “I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a cease-fire.”
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 showed 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.
