BEIRUT – At least five people were killed on March 9 – four from the same family – and nine wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon, the country’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel have traded deadly cross-border fire on a near-daily basis since war broke out in October between Israel and Gazan militant group Hamas, a Hezbollah ally.

“The attack against a house in the Khirbet Selm area killed a family of four”, a couple and their two children, and one other person, the NNA said, adding that the mother was also pregnant.

The strike demolished the house, wounding at least nine others who lived nearby, it said.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 312 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters, and 56 civilians have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

The fighting is mainly along border regions, but fears have grown of a broader conflict in Lebanon.

On March 5, a Lebanese couple and their son were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the southern border village of Hula.

In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed.

The Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas has killed 30,960 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s Health Ministry. AFP