Hezbollah said it was fighting Israeli troops in a border area in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, after announcing it had repelled two previous infiltration attempts near other frontier villages.

The militant group fired "rockets and artillery shells … as Israeli troops tried to advance in the Mays al-Jabal area from several directions", it said.

"Clashes are ongoing."

It said in two previous statements that Israeli forces "attempted to infiltrate the border town of Bilda" in the south-east and advance towards the border area of Labouneh on Wednesday morning, local time.

Hezbollah repelled the IDF with an explosive device and Bilda and artillery and "rocket-propelled weapons" in Labouneh, it said.

The militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian government, says it has thwarted a number of such infiltration attempts since the Israeli military launched ground operations in Lebanon on September 30.

In another Wednesday statement, it said its fighters "bombed … a gathering of Israeli enemy troops in… Mais al-Jabal with artillery shells".

The Iran-backed group has been launching rockets against Israel for a year in parallel with the Gaza war and is now fighting it in ground clashes.

The escalation in Lebanon and the ongoing one-year-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has raised fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could suck in Iran and Israel's closest ally, the US.

Entire Palestinian family killed as northern Gaza bombarded

At least 18 people were killed in overnight military strikes on Gaza, Palestinian medics said on Wednesday, as Israeli forces pressed on with a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the enclave's north.

The Israeli military says the raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabalia and to prevent them regrouping.

It has repeatedly issued evacuation orders to residents across the north, but Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe places to flee to in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had received unconfirmed reports that dozens of Palestinians may have been killed in Jabalia and other areas of northern Gaza, but is unable reach them because of Israeli bombardments.

The army said its 162nd Division began conducting operations, reporting close-quarter combat and weapons seizures.

Gaza's civil defence agency said the area has been pounded with air strikes in recent days, with dozens killed.

Nine members of the same family were killed in a strike targeting their apartment at the Shejaia neighbourhood in northern Gaza, Palestinian news agency WAFA said, citing medics from Palestinian Red Crescent.

While at Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, three others were killed, including a child, and several were wounded in an Israeli attack, WAFA added.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said at least 400,000 people were trapped in the area without access to basic services amid the evacuation orders.

"Many are refusing [to evacuate] because they know too well that no place anywhere in Gaza is safe," Mr Lazzarini wrote on X.

On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry issued an appeal to the international community to bring in fuel lest all hospitals "stop providing services due to the lack of fuel".

Hamas-led militants stormed through Israeli towns and kibbutz villages near the border on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave's health ministry, displaced nearly all its 2.3 million people — many of them multiple times — and wrought a humanitarian crisis with hunger widespread, and healthcare and critical infrastructure breaking down.

Israeli troops injured in combat

The Israeli military said three of its troops were severely injured on Tuesday and Wednesday during combat in southern Lebanon.

Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Wednesday morning after Israel renewed bombing of Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, overnight.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to say how many troops were in Lebanon but the military has announced four divisions are operating on the border, meaning that thousands of soldiers are deployed.

Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut's southern suburbs and said it had killed a figure responsible for budgeting and logistics, Suhail Hussein Husseini.

The suburbs, once a densely-populated and thriving district, has been emptied of many of its residents by Israeli evacuation warnings. Many Lebanese draw parallels between the warnings and those seen in Gaza over the last year, prompting fears that Beirut could face the same scale of destruction.

Russia's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Hezbollah was still organised and had not lost its chain of command despite Israeli strikes.

"According to our assessments, Hezbollah, including the military wing, has not lost its chain of command and is demonstrating organisation," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters.

The Israeli military said it intercepted two projectiles fired from Lebanon on Wednesday shortly after air raid sirens blared in and around the coastal town of Caesarea, south of Haifa.

Sirens were also sounded elsewhere in northern Israel, a day after the army said the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group had fired 180 projectiles into Israel, mainly at Haifa and the north.

Israeli authorities later said two people were killed in a town in northern Israel that was hit by rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel's ambulance service said that a man and a woman had been killed in the town of Kirya Shmona.

"We found a man and a woman aged around 40 years old, unconscious and injured by shrapnel. We carried out medical examinations, but their injuries were serious and we had to declare them dead on the spot," said emergency service provider Magen David Adom in a statement.

The military said about 20 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon in the barrage.

The conflict in Lebanon has escalated dramatically in recent weeks as Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon that expanded further this week.

The bombardment has left more than 2,100 people dead in Lebanon, most of them in the last two weeks, and displaced roughly 1.2 million across the country.

Six injured in Hadera stabbing attack, Israeli police say

At least six people have been wounded — two of them seriously — in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Hadera, police said on Wednesday.

Israeli police released a statement that the attack took place in "four separate locations" before they "located the suspect and neutralised him by shooting".

The statement described it as a "terrorist attack" but did not give further details, instead issuing a video of a person being apprehended.

"We treated several injured individuals in varying conditions, some of whom were in serious condition," emergency service provider Magen David Adom said after the attack.

"We provided life-saving medical treatment and began transporting them to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center," it added.

Syrian police officer killed in Israeli strike, state media reports

Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed a police officer in the south of Syria near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, state media said, the day after a deadly air strike on the capital.

Israel has repeatedly struck Syria throughout the civil war that started in 2011, but it has ramped up strikes in recent weeks amid its ground invasion in Lebanon.

Citing a police official, the official SANA news agency reported "the death of a security force member and wounding of another in an Israeli strike" on the outskirts of Quneitra city.

It comes after a strike in the Damascus neighbourhood of Mazzeh late on Tuesday, that a war monitor said targeted a building used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The Syrian government said Tuesday's strike killed seven civilians.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor on Wednesday reported a higher toll of nine civilians, including four children.

The Britain-based organisation said four others were also killed, including two members of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Ms Zakharova called the strikes in Syria "outrageous".

"Once again, Israel has grossly violated the sovereignty of Syria by launching a missile attack on a multi-storey apartment building in a densely populated area of Damascus," she said.

"It is outrageous that such actions have literally turned into a routine practice applied to Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip," Zakharova said, adding that it showed Israel's "desire to further expand the geography of armed escalation in the region."

Iran Revolutionary Guards commander 'in perfect health' after missing speculation

The commander of the overseas arm of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards is well and will receive a medal from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei soon, the Tasnim news agency quoted a senior Guards adviser on Wednesday as saying.

Commander Esmail Qaani, who travelled to Lebanon after the September 27 killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air strike, was previously reported missing following Israeli bombings of south Beirut last week.

"Commander Qaani is in perfect health and will receive the Fath medal from the Supreme Leader in the coming days," Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to Qaani, told Tasnim.

Deputy Commander Iraj Masjedi had on Monday denied reports that Qaani had been harmed in the course of Israel's intensifying air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut's southern suburbs.

EU, Türkiye fly aid to Lebanon

The European Union said on Wednesday it had launched a "humanitarian air bridge" to fly aid to Lebanon amid escalating Israeli air strikes and a ground invasion in the south.

The European Commission said three initial flights were scheduled to carry supplies from Italy and Dubai to the conflict-wracked country, with the first arriving in Beirut on Friday.

"The EU stands by the people affected by the crisis in Lebanon," commission president Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

"From blankets to shelter kits and medicines. More will come."

The EU last week said it was ramping up spending on humanitarian assistance to Lebanon by €30 million ($48.85 million) in response to the unfolding violence.

Brussels said it was already coordinating deliveries of aid to Lebanon from member states Belgium, France, Poland, Slovakia and Spain since last week.

Türkiye on Wednesday sent ships to evacuate around 2,000 of its citizens from Lebanon, with its Beirut envoy saying it would be "the biggest" evacuation of its type from the country.

The two ships set sail overnight for the Lebanese capital whose southern suburbs were hit overnight by fresh Israeli bombardments.

"These ships, with a capacity of around 2,000 people, will be ready to take those of our citizens who requested it from Lebanon to Mersin port," Turkish ambassador Ali Baris Ulusoy told TRT Haber public television.

The ambassador said the two ships were also bringing "approximately 300 tonnes of humanitarian aid" to show Turkey's support for the Lebanese people, including tents, bedding, hygiene kits and kitchenware.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called Israel a "Zionist terrorist organisation" over its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, and repeated his criticism of Western powers, namely the United States, over the support given to Israel.

Bolivia joins ICJ case against Israel

Bolivia has joined South Africa's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that alleges the Israeli Gaza offensive breaches the UN Genocide Convention, the court said on Wednesday.

The South American country is the latest of several nations — including Colombia, Libya, Spain and Mexico — adding their weight to the case against Israel, which denies the accusations.

Bolivia already announced in November it was severing diplomatic ties over what it described as the "disproportionate" attacks on Gaza by Israel.

At the time, Israel called the move "a surrender to terrorism".

In a January 26 ruling that made headlines around the world, the ICJ told Israel to do everything possible to prevent acts of genocide during its military operations in Gaza.

The court has also ordered Israel to ensure "unimpeded access" to UN-mandated investigators to look into allegations of genocide.

In its submission to the court made public on Wednesday, Bolivia argued, "Israel's genocidal war continues, and the Court's orders remain dead letters to Israel."

Reuters/AFP