<div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's military said a Hezbollah drone had killed four soldiers at one of its northern bases Sunday, as it expanded its bombardments of Lebanon and troops battled militants across the border.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The attack on a military training camp in Binyamina, near Haifa, is the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Authorities in Gaza, meanwhile, said the death toll from an Israeli strike Sunday on a school being used as a shelter for displaced people had risen to 15, including whole families.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon's south, United Nations peacekeepers said they had again in the firing line.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They said Israeli troops "forcibly" entered a UN position with two tanks, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the force to withdraw from the area.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's military said a tank had backed into the UN post while under fire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Hezbollah promises worse -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Iran-backed Hezbollah said late Sunday that it launched "a squadron of attack drones" at the Binyamina camp, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the major city of Haifa.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon's health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a later statement, Hezbollah warned Israel that "what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our noble and dear people".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted "over 60 wounded people" with injuries from mild to critical.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year in support of Hamas militants in Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since late September, however, its strikes have reached further into the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's sophisticated air defences have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Defend this 'blessed land' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's recent strikes have increasingly focused on areas beyond Hezbollah's traditional strongholds in southern Beirut, and Lebanon's south and east.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel said its air force hit "Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities" and other targets, while on the ground its soldiers "eliminated dozens" of fighters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said Israeli forces had "escalated their attacks" on southern Lebanon with "successive air strikes" pounding several border villages.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It later reported that an Israeli strike on Mayfadoun, near Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, had killed five people and wounded one other.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hezbollah said its forces clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to "infiltrate" villages along the border.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before the drone strike it had said it launched a salvo of rockets at a "base in southern Haifa".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The group later aired an audio recording of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah calling on fighters to "defend this holy and blessed land and this honourable people".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in south Beirut on September 27, and several other senior commanders of the movement have also been killed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel's military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- 'Shocking violations' -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UN peacekeepers accused Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions before dawn Sunday in south Lebanon, the latest of several incidents the UNIFIL mission has reported since Thursday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five Blue Helmets have so far been injured, provoking international condemnation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Two IDF (Israeli military) Merkava tanks destroyed the position's main gate and forcibly entered the position" in the Ramia area, before leaving 45 minutes later, UNIFIL said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Israeli military later said a tank "backed several meters into a UNIFIL post" while "under fire" and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu had called on the UN to move peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm's way, after the mission rejected requests to abandon its positions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The peacekeepers' presence had "the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields", said Netanyahu.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sunday said "attacks" against peacekeepers "may constitute a war crime".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">UNIFIL, with about 9,500 troops, is in southern Lebanon under the longstanding UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Three Lebanese soldiers were wounded on Sunday, the country's army said, when Israeli forces fired on military vehicles in the Marjayoun area.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">French President Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call with Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, appealed to Iran to support "a general de-escalation" in Lebanon and Gaza, his office said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">- US sending more air-defences -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli shelling had killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more Sunday at a school turned shelter for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza's Nuseirat camp.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded," said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's military said it was "looking into the reports".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said late Sunday that a WHO-Red Cross operation had managed to resupply two hospitals in northern Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"WHO and partners finally managed to reach Kamal Adwan and Al-Sahaba hospitals yesterday after 9 attempts this past week," he posted on X.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The number includes hostages killed in captivity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 42,000 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since Israel's military campaign began there. The UN considers these figures to be reliable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 1,300 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of official figures, including for Saturday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That toll exceeds the entire Lebanese toll of 1,200 -- mostly civilians -- in the last Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006, when 160 people, mostly soldiers, died in Israel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and its US military crew to Israel to help the ally protect itself from potential Iranian attack.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>