Lebanon's health ministry said six people including a woman and a child were killed on Friday in Israeli strikes on a southern town where Israel's army had issued an evacuation order despite a ceasefire.

The ministry statement said eight other people including a woman and a child were wounded in the two strikes on Habboush.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported unspecified casualties in Habboush after Israeli warplanes "launched a series of heavy strikes... less than an hour after warning" residents to evacuate.

Israel's military had warned it would act "forcefully" against Hezbollah after the Iran-backed group's "violations of the ceasefire agreement," and told residents to flee to open areas at least one kilometre from the town.

The NNA also reported Israeli strikes and artillery fire on other south Lebanon locations including a strike on the coastal city of Tyre.

Israel has kept up deadly strikes on Lebanon despite an April 17 ceasefire that sought to halt more than six weeks of war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The ceasefire text grants Israel the right to act against "planned, imminent or ongoing attacks."

Israeli soldiers are operating inside a "Yellow Line" running some 10 kilometres deep inside Lebanon's border where they are carrying out wide-scale detonations and demolitions of buildings.

The NNA said Israeli troops carried out detonations in the southern town of Shamaa and "demolished a monastery and a school" run by a religious order in the town of Yaroun after other detonations there of "homes, shops and roads."

Hezbollah claimed a series of attacks on Israeli troops and sites in southern Lebanon on Friday, saying they came in response to Israeli ceasefire violations.

The group drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in March with rocket fire at Israel to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Lebanon's health ministry on Friday raised the toll in Israeli strikes since March 2 to more than 2,600 dead, including 103 emergency workers and paramedics.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' under secretary general for national society development and coordination, Xavier Castellanos, said that when Lebanese Red Cross volunteers go on a mission, "they fear for their lives."

Two Lebanese Red Cross paramedics are among those killed in Israeli strikes.

"That a person that is trying to save lives, is trying to alleviate human suffering, might be targeted, might be killed... this is something that I found absolutely unacceptable," Castellanos told reporters near Beirut. (AFP)



Edited by Robert Kemp