International Desk

The Israeli military announced the deaths of seven additional Israeli soldiers who were killed in combat in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in clashes with the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, bringing the total toll since the offensive began to eight, according to BBC and CNN.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an officer and four soldiers from the Egoz Unit were “severely injured.”

The IDF did not say which areas in southern Lebanon the soldiers were killed. In addition to the Egoz Unit, the soldiers served in the Golani Brigade and the Yahalom Unit.

Earlier Wednesday, the IDF announced the death of another soldier.

Hezbollah said in separate statements that it had targeted Israeli forces in three different villages in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese army has said that an Israeli force breached 400 meters (about a quarter mile) in Lebanon and withdrew shortly after.

Later, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) told BBC that an Israeli attack on the southern Lebanese town of Aitaroun "claimed the lives of six of the town's residents and paramedics from the Islamic Health Authority."

It added that one person was also missing.

It described the attack as a "massacre" and said Israeli warplanes hit the town's Islamic Health Authority centre and "completely destroyed it", as well as destroying a clinic.

It added that while ambulance teams attended the scene, they were "exposed to a raid by an enemy drone".

Israel has not commented on the claims.

In southern Beirut, Hezbollah’s seat of power, the group’s spokesperson Mohammad Afif made his first public remarks on the developments from amid the rubble of a building struck down by an Israeli airstrike in recent days.

Afif also issued Hezbollah’s first reaction to Iran’s missile strikes on Israel last night, which Tehran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said avenged Nasrallah’s death.

“For all those who doubted Iran’s stance after the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh until recent weeks have been smacked in the mouth by a big rock,” Afif said in an impassioned statement. Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran in July. “Iran is the heart of the axis of resistance. Iran will not abandon the resistance nor the peoples of the resistance,” Afif added.

Press access to the southern suburbs of Beirut, a densely populated neighborhood, is rare. During the media tour, which covered the eastern part of the vicinity, CNN saw sidewalks covered in shattered glass, blown-out storefronts and a collapsed building on nearly every other block.

It was the first time the CNN team, which reports frequently from Beirut, had seen the aftermath of more than five days of Israeli bombardment in this part of the Lebanese capital.

“We’ll rebuild it all,” said one man on a moped. “Until then, we are going to step on Israel’s honor.”

Sources: BBC, CNN