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BEIRUT — Israel launched air strikes into Lebanon on Sunday, saying that it had thwarted a large-scale Hizbollah attack, while the Lebanese group said it had carried out its own raids to avenge a top commander's killing.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets had destroyed "thousands" of Hizbollah rocket launchers "aimed towards northern Israel and some were aimed towards central Israel", far from the border.

Hizbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese armed group countered that Israel was making "empty claims" of having thwarted a larger attack, and said its own operation for Sunday "was completed and accomplished".

The group has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces throughout the Gaza war, in a campaign Hezbollah says is in support of Palestinian ally Hamas.

But fears of a wider regional conflagration soared after attacks in late July blamed on Israel killed Iran-aligned militant leaders, including Hizbollah commander Fuad Shukr, prompting vows of revenge.

Hizbollah said its fighters "began an air attack with a large number of drones" sent across the border, followed with "more than 320" Katyusha rockets targeting "enemy positions".

The Lebanese movement said its attack was an "initial response" to Shukr's killing, adding that it had "ended with total success", although the extent of the damage on the Israeli side was not immediately clear.

An Israeli military spokesman, Nadav Shoshani, said the strikes from Hizbollah were “part of a larger attack that was planned and we were able to thwart a big part of it this morning”.

The government declared a 48-hour state of emergency, but 7:00 am (4:00 GMT) flights had resumed at Israel’s main international airport after a brief suspension, the aviation authority said.

In Lebanon, the Beirut airport did not close but some airlines, including Royal Jordanian and Etihad Airways, cancelled flights.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a media briefing that the Israeli strikes were meant “to remove the threats aimed at the citizens of Israel”.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported at least three dead in Israeli strikes in the country’s south. No casualties were immediately reported in Israel.

US support

The United States, Israel’s top arms provider, said it’s military was “postured” to support its ally.

The Israel-Hamas war, triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack, had already drawn in Iran-backed groups like Hizbollah.

The fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah has killed hundreds, mostly in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands of residents in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet and vowed “to do everything to... return the residents of the north safely to their homes” after more than 10 months of violence.

Attacks — largely in the Israel-Lebanon border area, but also some deeper into Lebanon — since October have killed some 605 people on the Lebanese side, mostly Hizbollah fighters, but including at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians, including in the Golan Heights.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant’s office said he had briefed his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on the situation.

Austin “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s defence against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

Gaza talks

The deaths last month of Shukr in Beirut and — hours later — of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran ratcheted up concerns that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip could spiral into a broader regional conflict.

In recent weeks, US and Arab diplomats have sought to head off a broader response to the killings, as mediators were making their latest push towards a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

A round of talks was due to be held Sunday in Cairo. An official from Netanyahu’s office told AFP that a decision would be taken later in the day about whether or not Israeli spy chiefs would attend.

On the ground in the besieged Palestinian territory, an AFP correspondent reported air strikes and artillery shelling on Gaza City, while witnesses said they saw battles in the area of Deir Al Balah, further south.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,334 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not break down civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Palestinian fighters have also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan —Sudan's de facto ruler, army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, said Saturday his government would not join peace talks with rival paramilitaries in Switzerland, vowing instead to "fight for 100 years".

"We will not go to Geneva... we will fight for 100 years," Burhan, whose troops have been battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for over 16 months, told reporters in Port Sudan.

The United States opened talks in Switzerland on August 14 aimed at easing the human suffering and achieving a lasting ceasefire.

While an RSF delegation showed up, the Sudanese armed forces were unhappy with the format and did not attend, though they were in telephone contact with the mediators.

The talks were co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and Switzerland, with the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations completing the so-called Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan Group (ALPS).

They wrapped up on Friday without a ceasefire but with progress on securing aid access on two key routes into the country, which is gripped by one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The brutal conflict has forced one in five people to flee their homes, while tens of thousands have died. More than 25 million across Sudan -- more than half its population — face acute hunger.

WASHINGTON — Talks in Cairo on reaching a Gaza truce have made progress, the White House said Friday, as it urged Israel and Hamas to move forward.

The White House confirmed that CIA chief William Burns and senior official Brett McGurk were taking part in discussions which started at a preliminary level Thursday evening.

"There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work towards implementation," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

"The preliminary talks that we had going into Cairo last night were constructive in nature. So we want to see that same sort of momentum continue here over the next couple of days," he said.

Kirby said that reports that the diplomacy was "near collapse" were inaccurate.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Middle East this week and said that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was onboard with a US proposal to bridge gaps and reach a ceasefire in the more than 10-month conflict.

Kirby said that the United States continued to believe that Netanyahu accepted the proposal, even though the right-wing leader has insisted on Israeli troops staying on the Gaza-Egypt border, butting heads with both Washington and Cairo.

Kirby appealed again to Hamas to accept the proposal, which was laid out last week in talks in the Qatari capital Doha.

"Think about what this deal will do for the people of Gaza. It gets them a period of calm and a potential end of the war and the violence and the bloodshed," Kirby said.

"It also gets them, because of the stop in the fighting, an incredible opportunity for all of us -- and I mean all of us, including the United States -- to dramatically increase the humanitarian assistance that's getting in," he said.

JERUSALEM — As their first birthday approaches, the triplets Gaza-native Hanane Bayouk gave birth to in Jerusalem before the war have seen their mother just once, and she fears she will "die without them".

The 26-year-old had to return to the Palestinian territory alone after giving birth to Najoua, Nour and Najmeh on August 24, 2023, because her Israeli travel permit had expired.

Bayouk received a permit to exit Gaza and give birth in annexed east Jerusalem's Al Maqased Hospital after seven years of painful IVF procedures.

She caught a glimpse of her children in their incubators, "barely an hour-and-a-half", before driving back to Gaza after her permit "expired and the hospital told me to leave".

Bayouk was supposed to return in early October after her daughters had spent several weeks in incubators, which were in short supply in hospitals in Gaza even before the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October.

'Far from the war'

Two days after she applied for a new exit permit on October 5, Hamas commandos blasted through the Erez terminal, the only entry point from Gaza into Israel.

Once in Israel, the militants carried out an unprecedented attack that left 1,198 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,265 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead have been women or children.

Like Bayouk, Heba Idriss found herself surrounded by war and unable to return to Jerusalem to get her only daughter, Saida, born prematurely at the Maqased two months earlier.

The 27-year-old had hoped to bring her newborn back to her husband Saleh at their home in Shujaiya, in the northern Gaza Strip.

Instead, the couple has been displaced nine times by Israeli air strikes or evacuation orders and her husband Saleh has only seen pictures of Saida.

"I want to see my daughter, I suffer so much from being separated from her,” she said in tears.

Hanane Bayouk too has been forced from her home and now lives in a displacement persons' camp in the south, sharing a tent with seven of her in-laws.

"It drives me crazy. It took me so long to get pregnant, and now I'm crying all the time," she told AFP on one of the rare days she was able to get through on Gaza's struggling phone network.

"Sometimes, I think I'd like for my daughters to return to Gaza before I die because I have never kissed them, but then I get a hold of myself and tell myself it's better for them to be safe far from the war," she said.

Back at the Maqased, neonatal intensive care unit director Hatem Khammach says that in normal times, there would not have been space to keep Nour, Najmeh, and Najoua for so long.

'I cry every time'

But the number of births at the hospital has fallen sharply as Israel has stopped issuing travel permits to mothers from Gaza and slashed the number given to mothers from the occupied West Bank.

With more checkpoints closed more often, even those with a permit struggle to access specialist treatment in Jerusalem. 

"Before the war, we had seven or eight Gaza babies in our department, which can host 30 at a time," Khammach said.

Since October, none have come, "and many sick people from the West Bank can't reach us".

But the hospital's health workers keep busy, like those who call Bayouk to let her speak on the phone to her three daughters.

"My husband can't do it. I do it and I cry every time we hang up. I'm afraid my daughters will grow up without knowing me," Bayouk said.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon's health ministry said early Wednesday that Israeli strikes in the country's east killed one person and wounded 20 others, hours after it said four people were killed in the south.

The strikes came more than 24 hours after Israel carried out similar raids deep inside east Lebanon and as tensions mounted in the wake of the Israeli killing of a top Hizbollah commander.

"Israeli enemy strikes on the Bekaa" valley killed one person "and wounded 20 others", the health ministry said in an updated toll.

The statement said one person was in critical condition while "eight children and a pregnant woman were moderately wounded".

A Hizbollah source, requesting anonymity, said several strikes hit east Lebanon near the city of Baalbek, including the village of Nabi Sheet, without specifying what was targeted.

A source from a local hospital told AFP that five children no older than 10, all from the same family, were among the wounded.

The strikes around midnight came after similar raids in the Bekaa region on Monday evening that Israel said targeted "Hizbollah weapons storage facilities".

They also came as Hizbollah said four of its fighters had been killed, after the health ministry said Tuesday that four people died in Israeli strikes in the southern border village of Dhayra.

The Iran-backed Hizbollah, an ally of Palestinian armed group Hamas, has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war began in October.

The violence has largely been restricted to the Lebanon-Israel border area, although Israel has repeatedly struck the country's eastern Bekaa valley near the border with Syria where Hizbollah also has a strong presence.

Hizbollah claimed a string of attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Tuesday, including sending barrages of Katyusha rockets at several north Israel military positions in stated retaliation for Israeli strikes, including in Dhayra.

The Shiite Muslim movement also said it launched "squadrons of explosive-laden drones" and "intense rocket barrages" at several Israeli positions in the annexed Golan Heights in response to Monday night's strikes in the Bekaa valley.

Health workers 'targeted' 

The Israeli military in separate statements said a total of around 115 "projectiles" were identified crossing from Lebanon.

It also said that "numerous suspicious aerial targets were identified crossing from Lebanon", with air defences intercepting some of them.

No injuries were reported, though the military said the incidents sparked fires in some areas.

The military also said air forces struck projectile launchers and several "Hizbollah military" structures in south Lebanon.

Lebanon's health ministry said three emergency personnel from the Hizbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee were hurt Tuesday when the Israeli military "targeted them" in south Lebanon, causing "significant damage to the ambulance they were travelling in".

The ministry "condemned in the strongest terms the repeated targeting of health workers in south Lebanon".

Several militant groups in Lebanon operate health centres and emergency response operations, with at least 21 rescue workers killed since October, according to an AFP tally.

Fears of a major escalation have mounted since Hizbollah and Iran vowed to respond to twin killings blamed on Israel late last month.

An Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs killed a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, shortly before an attack in Tehran blamed on Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The cross-border violence has killed some 590 people in Lebanon, mostly Hizbollah fighters but also including at least 128 civilians, according to AFP's tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.