Israel says four soldiers killed as army pushes deeper into south Lebanon

The Israeli military has said four soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon, where its forces are clashing with Hezbollah fighters after launching a ground invasion of the country.

An army statement on Tuesday named three soldiers from the same battalion who “fell during combat”. In a separate statement, it said another soldier had been killed in the same incident and two others wounded, without naming them.

Ten Israeli soldiers have been reported killed since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah flared up on March 2, following a United States-Israeli joint attack on Iran. More than 1,200 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, and more than a million displaced.

This comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said two peacekeepers were killed “when an explosion of unknown origin destroyed their vehicle” near the southern Lebanese village of Bani Haiyyan. Another peacekeeper was killed by a projectile on Sunday near the southern Lebanese village of Aadchit el-Qsair.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ordered the military to expand its invasion in southern Lebanon, pushing deeper to extend what he calls a “buffer zone” reaching the Litani River.

Israel’s far-right ministers have urged Netanyahu to annex southern Lebanon, as the military destroys bridges and homes to cut the area off from the rest of the country.

Al Jazeera’s Lebanon correspondent Zeina Khodr said Monday night marked a new escalation as Israel opened a new front in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, targeting roads that link towns known to be Hezbollah strongholds and strategic supply lines for the group.

“In the past weeks, [the Israeli army] hit bridges over the Litani, now they are trying to isolate the west Bekaa from southern Lebanon,” Khodr said, reporting from Beirut.

“Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem made it very clear they know the imbalance of power. They are not going to be able to stop this invasion, and the Israeli army will most likely reach until the Litani River, but they will not make it easy for them to consolidate control,” she continued.

“What Hezbollah is trying to do is make this a costly war for Israel.”

The escalation in Lebanon comes amid the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, which has killed more than 1,340 people since February 28.

The Israel Hayom newspaper on Monday reported that Netanyahu told senior US officials that any future agreement between the US and Tehran would not stop Israel’s war in Lebanon.

Israel’s far-right Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich last week said in an Israeli radio interview that the war in Lebanon “needs to end with a different reality entirely”, which includes a “change of Israel’s borders”.