Spotlight
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein and Middle East adviser Brett McGurk Thursday that any ceasefire deal with Hezbollah would have to guarantee Israeli security.
"The prime minister specified that the main issue is not paperwork for this or that deal, but Israel's determination and capacity to ensure the deal's application and to prevent any threat to its security from Lebanon," Netanyahu's office said after the meeting in Jerusalem.

The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli strikes on three locations in south Lebanon Thursday killed six rescuers affiliated with Hezbollah or its ally Amal.
The strikes killed five paramedics with the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee and one with the Amal-linked Risala Scouts, the health ministry said.

The United Nations children’s agency said on Thursday that the Israel-Hezbollah war has killed at least one child a day in Lebanon over the past month.

Rockets fired from Lebanon killed two more people in northern Israel on Thursday, Israeli medics said, raising the death toll there to seven in what marked the deadliest strikes to hit Israel since its military invaded southern Lebanon earlier this month.
The attack came as senior U.S. diplomats were in the region to push for cease-fires in Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East in the Biden administration's final months.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has said that tensions between Lebanese displaced by the Israel-Hezbollah war and hosting communities might lead to “instability” but not to a “civil war,” adding that the Lebanese parties do not want such a conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed Thursday in Israeli strikes on Syria's Qusayr region near the border with Lebanon, where Israel said it hit Hezbollah weapons depots.
The Britain-based war monitor said three strikes targeted the town of Qusayr, where Hezbollah holds sway, and surrounding areas.

The Israeli military has warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, including a built-up Palestinian refugee camp. Israeli airstrikes, meanwhile, killed at least eight people in different parts of the country on Thursday.
The Rashidiyeh refugee camp near the port city of Tyre is one of several dating back to the 1948 Mideast war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel.

A Lebanese security source said one person was killed Thursday by an Israeli strike on a road where a Hezbollah van carrying munitions was hit the previous day.

The United States on Tuesday offered a $5 million reward for information about a 1994 plane bombing in Panama blamed on Lebanon's Hezbollah that killed 21 people.

Human Rights Watch has warned that Syrians fleeing Israel's onslaught on Lebanon could face repression at home as more than 355,000 Syrians returned in more than a month of war.
"Syrians escaping Lebanon, particularly men, risk arbitrary detention and abuse by Syrian authorities," the group said in a statement.
