How the news unfolded: Israel tells its troops to prepare for ground operation after long-range Hezbollah missile attack

A Lebanese official said that there are serious efforts, led by the United States, to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The official, who has knowledge of the negotiations and who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to speak to the press on the matter, said the aim of negotiations is to reach a temporary four-week cease-fire.

Talks are ongoing in New York where Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati is attending the UN General Assembly.

A new deal will be based on implementing U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, he said.

Local media have reported that if reached, the deal will begin with a four-week cease-fire during which there will be talks for on further issues including land border demarcation, boosting Lebanese army presences along the border area.

A group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, claimed the attack on the port of Israel’s southern city of Eilat. The group has frequently claimed launching strikes on Israel.

Israel’s rescue services said two people suffered light injuries. The attack caused minimal damage.

A drone hit the port of the southern Israeli city of Eilat on Wednesday, and a second one was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, the Israeli military said.

Israel’s rescue services said two people suffered light injuries.

Footage aired on Israeli media showed a plume of smoke in the area of the port and at least one damaged building.

The army said the drones were identified “approaching from the East.”

The Israel Defense Force’s chief of staff says the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon.

Addressing troops on Israel’s northern border, the IDF Chief of Staff, LT. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said: “You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”

He added: “Today, Hezbollah expanded its range of fire, and later today, they will receive a very strong response. Prepare yourselves.”

Halevi said that to achieve the goal of returning displaced citizens of northern Israel to their homes, “we are preparing the process of a maneuver.”

Human Rights Watch says Israel’s ongoing aerial bombardment in Lebanon has put civilians “across the country at grave risk,” and called for a United Nations investigation into strikes in Lebanon and rocket fire by Hezbollah militants into northern Israel.

The global rights group documented over a thousand Israeli strikes across Lebanon since the Israeli military announced a new phase in its conflict with Hezbollah, which has launched over 200 rockets into northern Israeli towns.

The organization added that Israel’s warnings for thousands of civilians in Lebanon to evacuate from southern and eastern towns with only two hours’ notice did not give them adequate time to flee and could amount to violations of international law.

The Israeli military says its air force has struck some 280 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon so far on Wednesday.

It said the targets included launchers used to fire rockets on the northern Israeli cities of Safed and Nahariya.

Also among the targets were Hezbollah militants, buildings used to store weapons, and ready-to-use launchers, as well as some 60 targets belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence unit, the army said.

The military says its strikes in Lebanon are continuing.

The U.N. says over 90,000 people have been displaced by five days of Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Wednesday that a total of 200,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel nearly a year ago, drawing Israeli retaliation.

The Israeli military says it is activating reserve troops in response to rising tensions with the Hezbollah militant group.

The announcement Wednesday indicates that Israel is planning even tougher action against the Lebanese group. It comes hours after Hezbollah fired a missile toward Tel Aviv for the first time.

The army said it was calling up “two reserve brigades for operational missions in the northern arena.”

“This will enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organization,” it said.

The head of Israel’s northern command says it must be prepared for “maneuvers” in Lebanon, apparently referring to a possible ground operation.

Israel has carried out waves of heavy airstrikes in recent days against Hezbollah, which has fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel and targeted Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin said Israel had “entered a new phase of the campaign.”

“We need to change the security situation, and we must be fully prepared for maneuvers and action,” he said, according to a statement released Wednesday.

Israeli military officers often use the term “maneuver” to refer to ground operations.

He spoke on Tuesday during a visit to soldiers carrying out exercises near the border.

The military has said it is focused on aerial operations for now, without giving a timetable.

An Israeli airstrike in central Gaza has killed a pregnant woman and her four children, Palestinian medical officials say.

The strike on Wednesday hit a house in the urban Bureij refugee camp, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah.

An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies. Hospital records showed that the 35-year-old woman was 6 months pregnant. Her four children were between 8 and 18 years old.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses Hamas of putting them in danger by operating in crowded residential areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Pope Francis called for a stop to escalating tensions in Lebanon, calling it “unacceptable.”

“I am saddened by the news coming from Lebanon, where intense bombing in recent days has caused much death and destruction,” the pope said Wednesday during a regular audience at the Vatican.

“I hope that the international community will make every effort to stop this terrible escalation. It is unacceptable. I express my closeness to the Lebanese people, who have already suffered too much in the recent past.”

Seven hundred British troops are due to arrive Wednesday to the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus in preparation for the possible evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon.

Cyprus is located across a strip of water from Lebanon, and Beirut harbor has been used before to evacuate foreign nationals by sea from Lebanon.

During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, tens of thousands of foreigners were evacuated by sea to Cyprus in a fleet of commercial and military vessels, many supplied by American, British, European and other naval forces.

British Defense Secretary John Healey says the Royal Air Force will also have “aircraft and transport helicopters on standby to provide support if necessary.”

Israeli strikes have hit a town near the northern coastal town of Byblos, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

There were no immediate reported casualties, as Israeli warplanes pound southern and eastern Lebanon for a third day in a new phase of their ongoing conflict with the Hezbollah militant group.

A photo circulated by the NNA and local media shows large plumes of smoke between the houses and green fields of the town of Maisara, a stone’s throw away from the Mediterranean Sea.

As thousands of Lebanese flee the airstrikes from the country’s southern and eastern provinces, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israel launched three strikes airstrikes over the northeastern city of Hermel, the town of Labweh, and a handful of towns and villages across the country’s southern province.

The Israeli army says it will continue its strikes until it can return the tens of thousands of residents who were displaced from Israel’s north, near its border with Lebanon. Israel maintains that Hezbollah is launching rocket attacks in and near civilian areas.

While Lebanon’s north has mostly been spared from the strikes, Israel has launched rare strikes near the northern town of Mayrooba and in the outskirts of Qartaba.

The days of strikes have killed over 560 people, in some of Lebanon’s deadliest days since Israel’s war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Egypt, Jordan and Iraq say Israel is pushing the Middle East into an all-out war. Their foreign ministers are calling on the United Nations Security Council to intervene.

In a joint statement Wednesday, the three countries’ foreign ministers affirmed that averting a regional war requires the cessation of “the Israeli aggression on Gaza.” The ministers also condemned Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, and said that “Israel is pushing the region into an all-out war.”

Egypt and Jordan were the first two Arab countries to make peace with Israel. But relations have been strained since the war began in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Iraq has close ties to Iran, which supports both Hamas and the Lebanese militant group. Hezbollah has traded heavy fire with Israel in recent days.

The Israeli military intercepted a missile launched from Lebanon into central Israel on Wednesday morning in the latest escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel Rescue Services said there were no injuries or damage reported from the missile, which triggered sirens in Tel Aviv and Netanya, two large cities in central Israel. It was Hezbollah’s farthest strike yet in nearly a year of exchanges.

Hezbollah said it had fired a ballistic missile at the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, which it said was responsible for the targeted killing of its senior leaders. Israel later said it struck the site the missile was launched from in southern Lebanon.

Israeli airstrikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza left multiple Palestinians injured, including children, who were rushed to Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals.

AP footage shows two children with face injuries rushed inside Al-Aqsa hospital, while a man lying on a stretcher inside an ambulance was wailing in pain as two other men were lying face down. Several children were brought in with injuries to their legs and faces.

At the hospital morgue, a mother is seen crying and bidding farewell to her twin sons, Osama and Bilal Fayad, two young men who were killed in the strikes in Nuseirat.

“I raised those two boys.. they were killed together after being struck,” said their father Ahmed Fayad. “They were born together and died together.”

Over a dozen people gathered outside the hospital to perform a funeral prayer as the bodies of the twins were in front of them on the ground wrapped in white shrouds before they were loaded onto a motorbike to be taken for burial.

The strike that killed the Fayad twins in Nuseirat camp also killed three women and injured over 20 people were also injured, according to Awda hospital, where they were taken.

The Israeli strikes in Nuseirat and Bureij camps on Tuesday killed a total of 29 Palestinians, including 14 children and 6 women, hospital officials told the AP.

Israel’s Defense Minister said Tuesday that Hezbollah has suffered “extremely severe blows” and Israel has “more strikes ready.”

Speaking to troops after an IDF drill that simulated a ground offensive in Lebanon, Yoav Gallant said “The Hezbollah of today is not the Hezbollah of a week ago. The sequence of blows it faced in its command and control, its operatives, its weapons — all these things are extremely severe blows.”

The Israeli military says it has killed a commander with Hezbollah’s missile and rocket unit in a strike in Beirut.

It said Ibrahim Kobeisi, who it said was responsible for launches toward Israel, was killed Tuesday.

The military said “other key commanders” were with Kobeisi at the time of the strike, but it did not say whether any of them had been killed or injured.

Sirens have continued almost nonstop across large parts of northern Israel, warning of incoming fire after Israeli forces carried out what they described as a “targeted strike” on a southern Beirut suburb on Tuesday.

The Israeli military says about 100 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel in several barrages over the last two hours, including on the Haifa bay area, the Golan Heights, and the city of Safed. There were no reports of injuries.

Israeli police said there was heavy damage in several places by falling fragments of rockets or interceptors, and a fire was sparked in the Golan Heights.

An Israeli airstrike hit a building in a southern Beirut suburb on Tuesday afternoon, a Hezbollah TV station reported. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Later, Israel’s military said it had carried out a “targeted strike” in Beirut, without elaborating. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said “a number of people” were injured in the strike , which destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building.

Al-Manar TV, which belongs to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, said the strike occurred in the suburb of Ghobeiri, without giving any details.

The attack came after a Monday evening airstrike missed Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s top military commander in south Lebanon, the group said.

An Israeli airstrike on a nearby area on Friday killed 55 people, including top Hezbollah military commander Ibrahim Akil and 15 other Hezbollah members.

A journalist working for the pan-Arab network Al-Mayadeen has been killed in an Israeli airstrike while he was at his home in southern Lebanon, the network said.

Hadi Al-Sayyed, 22, is the third journalist from the network killed in the ongoing conflict between the Israeli military and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. The network said he was wounded on Monday and died of his wounds on Tuesday.

According to the TV station, Al-Sayyed worked for Al-Mayadeen’s online section and was at his house in the town of Burj Rahhal near the southern city of Tyre when it was hit.

Last November, Al-Mayadeen’s correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Al-Maamari were killed in an Israeli strike while covering southern Lebanon.