Middle East fighting rages on several fronts, killing at least 16

Fighting raged on several fronts in the Middle East on Thursday, killing at least 16 people.

Five people were killed in northern Israel by projectiles fired from Lebanon, including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, authorities said. Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed at least eight people, including six health workers in the country’s south.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said an Israeli attack in the occupied West Bank killed three people. The Israeli military said it also struck Hezbollah weapons depots and bases in Syria, where it claimed the militant group recently began storing weapons along the Syria-Lebanon border to smuggle them into Lebanon.

Israel issued an evacuation warning to residents of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon for a second consecutive day. On Wednesday, it conducted heavy airstrikes targeting Hezbollah in and around the city famed for its Roman temples.

Dozens of cars could be seen speeding out of the area after Thursday's warning, with wafts of black smoke still visible emanating from the town of Douris, where an Israeli strike the previous day destroyed Hezbollah fuel stocks, according to the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source.

U.S. envoys and Israeli officials met in Israel later to discuss efforts to craft a cease-fire in Lebanon, where Israeli forces are battling Hezbollah, and in Gaza, where they are fighting Hamas, with both U.S.-designated terror groups supported financially and militarily by Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein and U.S. Middle East adviser Brett McGurk that any cease-fire deal with Hezbollah would have to guarantee Israel's security.

"The prime minister specified that the main issue is not paperwork for this or that deal, but Israel's determination and capacity to ensure the deal's application and to prevent any threat to its security from Lebanon," Netanyahu's office said after the meeting in Jerusalem.

The talks were centered on a possible 60-day cease-fire to allow the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which would call for Hezbollah to withdraw its armed presence from an area south of the Litani River.

Hezbollah's newly named leader Naim Kassem said this week the militant group would keep fighting its war with Israel until it is offered cease-fire terms it deems acceptable.

The killing of the six Lebanese health workers and the wounding of four others in three separate strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday brought the death toll of health workers to 178 over the last year, while 279 health workers have been injured, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

Hezbollah said it had launched several rocket and artillery attacks against Israeli forces near the southern town of Khiyam on Thursday. It marked the fourth straight day of fighting in and around the strategic hilltop town, which is home to one of the largest Shiite communities in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah aims to keep Israeli forces out of the town to prevent them from detonating homes and buildings, as has happened on a large scale in other border towns, a source familiar with the group's thinking told Reuters.

Hezbollah says its fighters have prevented Israel from fully occupying or controlling any southern villages, while Israel says it is carrying out limited ground operations aimed at destroying the group's infrastructure.

The Israeli attack on the occupied West Bank included airstrikes in the area of the Nur Shams refugee camp. The military said it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure” and that it killed a Hamas militant who was involved in planning attacks.

Since Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 763 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides met at the White House on Wednesday to discuss how to bring an end to the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza.

Cyprus, the European Union nation closest to Gaza, has played a key role in enabling the delivery of humanitarian aid into the territory.

After his meeting with Biden, Christodoulides said he was "quite optimistic" that a Lebanese cease-fire deal would be reached soon.

Israel is demanding that Hezbollah pull back to north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers from the Israeli frontier. In addition, Israel wants the Lebanese army to deploy along the border, an international intervention mechanism to enforce the truce, and that Israel will remain free to respond militarily in case of threats.

The war in Lebanon erupted late last month, nearly a year after Hezbollah began low-intensity cross-border fire into Israel in support of Hamas.

The conflict in the region began when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and captured about 250 hostages in their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Israel says it believes Hamas is still holding 101 hostages, including 35 the military says are dead.

Israel's counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 43,100 Palestinians, according to the territory's Health Ministry, with Israel saying the death toll includes thousands of militants. The Israeli campaign has devastated much of the Gaza Strip, while the fighting and Israeli evacuation orders have displaced about 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.