An Israeli air strike in a border area in southern Lebanon killed at least 10 firefighters, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
A statement said the firefighters had been “ready to go out on rescue missions” from a municipal building in Baraachit when it was struck overnight.
Rescuers were still searching for civilians trapped under the rubble, it added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, but it said overnight that fighter jets had struck targets in southern Lebanon.
On Monday afternoon, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli aircraft had struck more than 30 towns and villages around the southern coastal city of Tyre.
The BBC’s Orla Guerin, who is in Tyre, said some of the locations hit were in the hills close to the border with Israel, but that at least one struck a built-up area of the city.
The Israeli Forces said at the time that it was conducting “extensive” strikes against Hezbollah in the south, as well as a “targeted” strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The Israeli forces also ordered the evacuation of another 20 communities in the south, including the coastal town of Naqoura where the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have their headquarters.
Three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 1,400 people, including 22 on Sunday, and displaced another 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.
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Hezbollah – a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon – has remained defiant despite suffering a series of devastating blows in recent weeks, including the killing of its leader and most of its top military commanders.
On Monday, the group insisted it was “confident… in the ability of our resistance to oppose the Israeli aggression”.
It came hours after Hezbollah rockets struck the northern Israeli port city of Haifa and the town of Tiberias, causing damage and nine injuries.
Another 135 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Monday, according to the Israeli forces. Police said a road was damaged in the Lower Galilee region between Haifa and Tiberias.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after Palestinian freedom fighters Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel.
