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Hezbollah warned Saturday that it would have no choice but to fight on after an Israeli strike on targets in Lebanon killed eight of its operatives.Lebanon's government has vowed to disarm Hezbollah, but Israel insists it retains the right to defend itself by striking the fighter group.On Friday, the Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah command centres in eastern Lebanon and targets linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in the south.**media[419500]**Hezbollah said Saturday that eight of its fighters had been killed, after Lebanon's health ministry said 10 people died in the east and two in the south."What happened yesterday in the Bekaa is a new massacre and a new aggression," Hezbollah official Mahmud Qamati said, in a speech broadcast by the Al-Manar network."What option do we have left to defend ourselves and our country? What option do we have other than resistance? We no longer have any option."Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun also condemned the attacks, which came just days after the government said the army will start implementing the second phase of its plan to disarm Hezbollah in the south of the country.The strikes came as tensions were also building between the US and Iran, with US President Donald Trump threatening military action over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.Iran backs several armed groups in the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas.In Lebanon's eastern city of Baalbek, a mass funeral was held for commander Hussein Mohammad Yaghi and one of the fighters, with hundreds of people gathered, waving Hezbollah flags and chanting support.A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP all eight members of the group were attending a meeting in the eastern Bekaa region when a strike killed them.The Israeli military said it had targeted "several fighters of Hezbollah's missile array in three different command centres in the Baalbek area".An AFP correspondent in eastern Lebanon saw a bulldozer clearing debris following the strike on Bednayel, and a heavily damaged building between Riyak and Ali al-Nahri, where the Hezbollah official said the members were meeting.The raids were against targets in residential areas, according to the correspondent.They came hours after an Israeli strike on the country's largest Palestinian refugee camp in the south killed two people, according to the health ministry, with Israel's army saying it had targeted Hamas.In a statement, Hamas condemned the attack, which it said led to civilian casualties as the targeted building "belongs to the joint security force charged with maintaining security and stability in the camp".Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon despite a November 2024 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, usually saying it is targeting the group, but occasionally also Hamas fighters.Aoun called Friday's attacks "a blatant act of aggression aimed at thwarting diplomatic efforts" by the US and other nations to establish stability.Washington is one of five members of a multinational committee overseeing the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, with the body scheduled to meet again next week.Hezbollah lawmaker Rami Abu Hamdan said the group "will not accept the authorities acting as mere political analysts, dismissing these as Israeli strikes we have grown accustomed to before every meeting of the committee".He called on Beirut to "suspend the committee's meetings until the enemy ceases its attacks".Lebanon's government last year committed to disarming the group, with the army saying last month it had completed the first phase of the plan covering the area near the Israeli border.Israel, which accuses Hezbollah of rearming since the war, has called the Lebanese army's progress on disarming the fighter group insufficient. 

Killing of commander has deepened fears of new escalationIsrael has kept up strikes since US-brokered truce a year agoAnalyst says Israel could be using AI to identify future targetsHundreds gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs Monday to mourn Hezbollah's top military commander Haytham Ali Tabtabai and four other fighters from the Lebanese group killed in an Israeli strike on the city's outskirts the previous day.The targeted assassination by Israel - a type of operation that had become rarer since a ceasefire was agreed last year - came a day after Lebanon marked its Independence Day and deepened fears of a renewed Israeli escalation. As the mass funeral snaked its way through neighbourhoods in the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs Monday, chants rang out against Israel and the United States. Both countries have been pressuring Lebanon to move faster to disarm Hezbollah, in line with the 2024 ceasefire agreement."We will not leave our weapons, we will not leave our land!" the mourners chanted. Top Hezbollah political officials attended the funeral in person but it was unclear if any military officials were present.The November 2024 US-brokered ceasefire was meant to end a year of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli military, triggered by Hezbollah's rocket fire on Israeli posts a day after the October 2023 storming of Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas. During that war, Israel killed Hezbollah's then-leader Hassan Nasrallah, his expected successor and much of the group's top military brass.Tabtabai, 57, rose through the ranks swiftly to fill roles left by slain commanders, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source. After the truce, he was appointed the group's top military official and sat on its Fighter Council, the body responsible for military operations.A Lebanese security source said Israel now appeared to be targeting the group's "next generation" after having killed most of the group's founding leadership."Israel is peeling them off layer by layer," said a Western diplomat who works on Lebanon.Israel has sustained near-daily strikes on Lebanon since the truce, targeting what it says are Hezbollah arms depots, fighters and efforts by the group to rebuild. It has ratcheted up the strikes in recent weeks.Israel has also continued to gather intelligence on Hezbollah's activities using surveillance drones, a Lebanese security source said. Monday, Israeli drones flew over Beirut, Lebanon's south and its eastern Bekaa Valley, according to the source.Israel's advanced capabilities have worried Hezbollah's supporters. Malek Ayoub, a retired military analyst, told Hezbollah's Al Manar television station Monday that Israel could be using facial recognition technology to identify Hezbollah figures from the station's coverage of Tabtabai's funeral."Artificial intelligence can identify any of those faces to build Israel's bank of targets," Ayoub said.

An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed one person Saturday, Lebanon's health ministry said, in the latest attack despite a nearly year-long ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah group. In a statement, the ministry attributed the death to "an Israeli enemy strike" on a vehicle in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah.The ministry also reported that a grenade dropped by an Israeli drone in the southern town of Shaqra wounded five people. Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported several more strikes elsewhere in the south and east, but no casualties reported so far.The Israeli military said it struck "several Hezbollah launchers that were recently identified and placed in military sites in southern Lebanon". The army also hit "two Hezbollah military sites... including weapons storage facilities and additional military structures", according to its statement. It did not immediately comment on the deadly incident in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah.The NNA identified the man killed as Kamel Reda Qarnabash, saying he was driving at the time. The Israeli army earlier Saturday had said that it killed a Hezbollah member in a strike the day before. "In a targeted strike the (Israeli army) eliminated a Hezbollah fighter in the Froun area in southern Lebanon" on Friday, the military said in a statement.It alleged the Hezbollah member had "advanced fighter attacks against the State of Israel" and its forces. The Lebanese health ministry said Friday that an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Froun killed one person. Lebanon has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire agreement reached in November 2024 — which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah — by continuing its strikes and maintaining forces inside its territory.Israel has said Hezbollah is working to rebuild its military capabilities, accusing the group of breaking the ceasefire terms. According to the health ministry, more than 330 people have been killed in Lebanon and 945 wounded since the ceasefire.An Israeli strike on Tuesday night on the Ain al-Hilweh camp for Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon killed 13 people. On Friday, Israel said it had targeted "fighters" from the Palestinian Hamas group, allied with Hezbollah, in the strike on the camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon. Israel's military "is operating against Hamas's establishment in Lebanon", it said in Friday's statement.A secondary school in the camp said in a statement on its Facebook page on Thursday that two of its students were killed, publishing an image of two adolescent boys. The US has sought to pressure the Lebanese government to make Hezbollah hand over its weapons, which the group has so far refused to do.

An Israeli strike flattened a high-rise in Gaza City Saturday — the second in as many days — after the military warned people to flee ahead of a planned offensive against the urban hub. Israel has been warning for weeks of a new assault on the territory's largest city, without issuing a timeline. It has stepped up air strikes and ground operations on the city's outskirts, sparking fears it could worsen already dire conditions. Saturday, Israeli aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets on western neighbourhoods calling on residents to evacuate, witnesses and an AFP journalist said. Nafez Anis, who has been living in a tent with his family in Gaza City, said he had read the leaflet, but was not planning on leaving. "Where should we go?" he told AFP. "We will wait, and when we see Israeli tanks approaching here, we will leave." Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 55 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire during the day, including 18 near an aid distribution centre in the north. Saturday, the military struck a Gaza City high-rise, saying Hamas was using it "to monitor" Israeli troops and adding that it had taken "measures to mitigate harm to civilians". Witnesses identified the building as the Sussi residential tower and said it was destroyed. Hamas condemned the attack and denied using residential or civilian buildings for military purposes. The Israeli military has said it will target structures being used by Hamas, particularly tall buildings. It also issued an evacuation order for another high-rise Saturday, warning of an imminent strike and telling people to leave for the south. A military spokesperson had earlier called on residents to leave for Al-Mawasi, on the Mediterranean coast to the south. Israel first declared Al-Mawasi a safe zone early in the war, but has carried out repeated strikes on it since then, saying they targeted Hamas. Gaza City residents said they believed it made little difference whether they stayed or fled. "Some say we should evacuate, others say we should stay," said Abdel Nasser Mushtaha, 48. "But everywhere in Gaza there are bombings and deaths" he added, pointing, in particular, to the strikes on Al-Mawasi. "It no longer makes any difference to us," said his daughter Samia Mushtaha, 20. "Wherever we go, death pursues us, whether by bombing or hunger." Israel has faced mounting domestic and international pressure to end the nearly two-year war. Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Saturday evening to call for a ceasefire and hostage release deal. In Tel Aviv, protesters unfurled a massive banner saying: "President Trump, save the hostages now!" Hamas agreed last month to a proposal for a temporary ceasefire and staggered hostage releases, but Israel has demanded the group release all the hostages at once, disarm and relinquish control of Gaza, among other conditions. The UN estimates nearly 1mn people remain in and around Gaza City, where it declared a famine last month. It has warned of a looming "disaster" if the assault proceeds. Israel's offensive has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.

The prime minister of Yemen's Houthi government and several other ministers were killed in an Israeli strike on the capital Sanaa, the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council said Saturday, in the first such attack to kill senior officials.A number of others were wounded in Thursday's strike, Mahdi al-Mashat added, without providing details.Israel said on Friday that the airstrike had targeted the Iran-aligned group's chief of staff, defence minister and other senior officials and that it was verifying the outcome.Mashat's statement did not make clear whether the Houthi defence minister was among the casualties.Ahmad Ghaleb al-Rahwi became prime minister around a year ago but the de facto leader of the government was his deputy, Mohamed Moftah, who was assigned Saturday to carry out the prime minister's duties.Rahwi was seen largely as a figurehead who was not part of the inner circle of the Houthi leadership.During the last year, Israel carried out a series of assassinations targeting senior leaders and commanders of Hamas and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, significantly weakening both groups.The Houthi-run news agency Saba ran a statement from Defence Minister Mohamed al-Atifi shortly after the prime minister's death was confirmed and quoted him as saying the group was ready to confront Israel.The statement did not mention Thursday's airstrike and it was unclear if it was made before or after the attack.Atifi runs the Houthis' Missiles Brigade Group and is considered their leading missiles expert.Sources confirmed to Reuters that the energy, foreign and information ministers were among those killed.On Thursday, Israeli security sources had said the targets had been various locations where a large number of senior Houthi officials had gathered to watch a televised speech recorded by leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi.The Israeli military described the attack as a "complex operation" made possible by intelligence-gathering and air superiority."Our stance remains as it is and will remain until the aggression ends and the siege is lifted, no matter how great the challenges," Mashat said in a televised speech, adding that the group "shall take revenge."