Jerusalem: Around 30 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Wednesday morning, according to the Israeli military. Hezbollah took responsibility for the launches and said they were in response to an Israeli airstrike on a paramedic centre linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group in south Lebanon that killed seven of its members overnight.
Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group began launching rockets toward Israel one day after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7. There has been near-daily violence, mostly confined to the area along the Lebanon-Israel border, and international mediators are scrambling to prevent an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that his government will not accept Hamas' delusional conditions for a cease-fire in Gaza. The militant group rejected the latest truce proposal because it says Israel is ignoring the group's core demands: an end to the war and Israel's full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Israel seeks to destroy Hamas and to recover all of the approximately 100 Israeli hostages still in Gaza, as well as the remains of some 30 others.
Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and another 250 people abducted when militants launched a surprise attack out of Gaza on October 7, triggering the war. More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 74,000 wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tally. The ministry says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.
