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The fighting comes as the region awaits a potential Israeli counterstrike against Iran, which fired missiles at Israel last week and which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israel has also broadened its attacks in Lebanon in recent days, expanding its campaign against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas.

Israel’s attacks against Hezbollah had largely been concentrated in the south and near Beirut. But Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah, said an Israeli strike in northern Lebanon had killed one of its commanders.

It was not clear if the attack had killed its target, the presumed successor to Hezbollah’s slain leader. In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened further attacks on Israel. At the White House, President Biden suggested Israel should consider

The Israeli military told residents of more than 20 towns and villages to leave, a sign that its invasion could be expanding. The death toll in an Israeli strike near central Beirut rose to nine, Lebanese officials said.

The Israeli military said it was conducting what it called “a precise strike” in Beirut. State media said a health authority building in the Bachoura neighborhood had been hit.

Already crippled by years of economic decline, political paralysis and other crises, Lebanon has little but its own citizens’ grit to survive the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

Sameh al-Asali, who was sheltering in the city of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was killed when a large missile fragment slammed into him.

The attack, which ended shortly after it began on Tuesday evening, was a sharp escalation in the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran and could tip the region further into turmoil.

Israel’s cabinet was meeting on Monday evening to discuss whether and when to launch a major ground operation in southern Lebanon, which would be Israel’s first there in nearly two decades.