Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group fired anti-tank missiles and artillery shells at an Israeli military convoy in a disputed area along the border, killing an Israeli civilian, the group and Israel’s military has said.
Hezbollah said that its fighters ambushed the convoy shortly before midnight on Thursday, destroying two vehicles.
The Israeli military said the ambush wounded an Israeli civilian doing infrastructure work, and that he later died of his wounds.
Low-intensity fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border has repeatedly threatened to boil over as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah militants in recent months.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border.
On the Israeli side, the cross-border fighting has killed 10 civilians and 12 soldiers, while in Lebanon, more than 350 people have been killed, including 50 civilians and 271 Hezbollah members.
On Thursday, Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least five people.
More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for an offensive in the city.
The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles in the area in what appears to be preparations for an invasion of Rafah.
In central Gaza, four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling.
A ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack on Thursday, officials said – the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, a top Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented October 7th raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages.
Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, around two-thirds of them children and women.
