In another Israeli airstrike, nine people, seven of them civilians, were killed on south Lebanon, official sources said, while the Israeli army said it lost a soldier in cross-border rocket fire.

As quoted by the Reuters news agency, the sources said that a woman and her two children were killed in the strike in the village of al-Sawana. Lebanon's powerful armed group Hezbollah said a strike on a separate town killed one of its fighters.

Hezbollah and the Israeli military had been exchanging fire for over four months when the Lebanese armed group fired rockets across the disputed border in support of Hamas, which launched a deadly attack on Israel on October 7.

While the rocket attack was not immediately claimed, the exchanges of fire -- and the worst single-day civilian death number in Lebanon since cross-border hostilities began in October -- raised fears of a broader conflict between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.

This becomes a major concern as chances of war between Israel and Lebanon appear to have increased after months of cross-border fire as before the Israeli strikes, reports said that fire from Lebanon wounded multiple people in northern Israel, according to medics.

As reported by the news agencies, the Magen David Adom emergency service said that seven people were wounded, five of them in the town of Safed.

Although Hezbollah did not announce any operations on Wednesday, the head of its executive council said that Israel's attacks "cannot pass without a response".

But Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Tuesday (Feb 13) that fire from southern Lebanon will end "when the attack on Gaza stops and there is a ceasefire" between Hamas and Israel.