Lebanon officials say five killed in Israeli airstrike

Lebanon's health ministry has said Israel struck the southern city of Tyre, killing at least five people and wounding 10 others.

An "Israeli enemy strike this morning on a building" in the centre of the coastal city "led to a provisional toll of five dead and 10 wounded", a health ministry statement said.

It added that "work is ongoing to remove the rubble".

An AFP video journalist saw emergency personnel rush a survivor to an ambulance on a stretcher, while other rescuers worked to put out a heavily smouldering fire at the site, where a residential apartment block had collapsed.

Tyre, an ancient coastal city which has a UNESCO World Heritage site, was subjected to heavy Israeli strikes last week, leaving swathes of the centre in ruins.

Israel last month escalated air strikes on Hezbollah and sent ground forces into Lebanon, following a year of cross-border exchanges of fire with the Iran-backed group over the Gaza war.

Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's airstrikes hit Iran's defences and missile production "hard" as Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was considering its response.

With warfare continuing in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiraling into a wider regional conflict.

But a day after the airstrikes, there was no sign they would prompt another round of escalation.

However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which sharply intensified over recent weeks, continued with an Israeli airstrike killing eight people in a residential block in Sidon, medics said.

"The air force attacked throughout Iran. We hit hard Iran's defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us," Mr Netanyahu said in a speech, calling the attack "precise and powerful" and saying it met all its objectives.

Israel’s army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said the strike on Iran had showed what the Israeli response to its enemies would be.

He said: "We struck strategic systems in Iran, which carries great importance and we will now see how things develop.

"We are prepared for all scenarios in every arena."

Iran has not signalled how it will respond to Saturday's strikes, which involved scores of fighter jets bombing targets near the capital Tehran and in the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan.

The UN Security Council will likely convene to discuss the attack, diplomats said.

The heavily armed revivals have engaged in a cycle of retaliatory moves against each other for months, with Saturday's strike coming after an Iranian missile barrage on 1 October, much of which Israel said was downed by its air defences.

Mr Khamenei said Israel's calculations "should be disrupted".

The attack on Iran, which killed four soldiers and caused some damage, "should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated", he said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran was not looking for war but would give an "appropriate response".

US President Joe Biden called for a halt to escalation, which has raised fears of a wider Middle East war arising from the year-old Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza and Israel's thrust into south Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocketing northern Israel.

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Separately, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Iran was no longer able to use its allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel.

The two groups "are no longer an effective tool" of Iran, he said in a speech.

Mr Gallant added that Hamas was no longer functioning as a military network in Gaza and that Hezbollah's senior command and most of its missile capabilities had been eliminated.

Hamas has repeatedly said it is still able to function militarily, and Israel has recently conducted major new operations in devastated north Gaza against what it calls regrouping Hamas militants.

Hezbollah has said its command structure remains intact and that it retains significant missile capabilities.

The Israeli military urged residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately yesterday and move north of the Awali River.

An Israeli strike on Sidon, a city in coastal south Lebanon, killed at nine people and wounded 25, the country's health ministry said.

Elsewhere in the south, a strike on Zawtar al-Sharkiya killed three people and a Saturday bombing of Marjayoun killed five, it said.