Israel carried out new strikes in southern Lebanon yesterday that it said targeted Hezbollah, wounding 37 people as the two countries' envoys started a second day of peace talks in Washington.
United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Lebanon Imran Riza condemned the "unacceptable" toll from continued attacks, saying that "diplomatic efforts now offer a critical opportunity to stop the violence".
A truce in the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has been in place since April 17, but it has not stopped the fighting, with hundreds killed in strikes since then and both sides accusing the other of violations.
"The IDF has begun striking Hezbollah infrastructure sites in the area of Tyre in southern Lebanon," the Israeli military said in a statement.
An AFP correspondent reported a series of strikes, two of them near the city of Tyre, while state media said another targeted a centre run by a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) near a hospital.
Lebanon's health ministry said the strikes on the Tyre district wounded at least 37 people, including six hospital personnel, nine women and four children.
Hafez Ramadan, a resident near the building targeted by the airstrike, said it had housed people who had fled their towns due to the war, and was adjacent to a hotel where more displaced were staying.
"There are only women, children and the elderly here," he said. "Because of this strike, people have been displaced again."
The Israeli army had earlier issued evacuation warnings for five towns and villages in and around the southern coastal city.
It later issued a new evacuation warning for five other towns across the south.
In a separate statement, the military said an Israeli soldier was killed in southern Lebanon, bringing the number of Israeli soldiers killed in clashes with Hezbollah since early March to 19.
A civilian contractor was also killed.
It said it killed more than 220 Hezbollah fighters over the past week and struck hundreds of targets.
Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported other strikes on locations in the south not included in the Israeli evacuation warnings.
Hezbollah meanwhile claimed several attacks on Israeli troops in several southern Lebanese towns.
It also claimed a drone attack on the headquarters of the Israeli army's 300th brigade, one of the units operating in Lebanon.
Riza said "the reality on the ground in Lebanon has been deeply alarming", adding that "airstrikes and demolitions continue daily, with an unacceptable toll on civilians and civilian infrastructure".
However, he expressed his hope that the Lebanon-Israel talks "will pave the way toward a political solution".
Representatives from Lebanon and Israel, officially at war for decades, resumed talks at the State Department in Washington shortly after 9am (1300 GMT), one diplomat said.
The US described the first day of talks in Washington on Thursday as positive, but neither Lebanon or Israel have commented.
Lebanon hopes that the round of negotiations in Washington will end with an extension of the ceasefire and an agreement from Israel to halt its attacks.
If an extension is not agreed, the truce will expire tomorrow.
Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Israeli attacks since then have killed more than 2,900 people in Lebanon, including more than 400 since the truce took effect, according to Lebanese authorities.
Lebanon is under heavy US and Israeli pressure to disarm Hezbollah.
Israeli troops have invaded parts of southern Lebanon since the start of the war, carrying out widespread demolitions of villages over the past weeks.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, rejects outright any direct engagement between the two countries.
Senior Hezbollah official Mahmud Qamati said yesterday that Beirut "going to direct, humiliating negotiations with the Israeli enemy is not a separate issue from a comprehensive conspiracy against the nation, its sovereignty and its resistance" at a time when "the south is being destroyed and martyrs are being killed daily".
