As hostilities ramp up, Israelis evacuated from the country’s north say Hezbollah must be pushed back to protect communities from its rockets

For the Israeli communities evacuated from the country’s far north in the aftermath of 7 October, there is no longer any doubt about whether full-scale war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is going to happen. For most people, the only question is when.

Nissan Zeevi, 40, has spent the past six months working as a first responder in Kfar Giladi, a kibbutz that grows apples and avocados. His wife and two young boys are living near the Sea of Galilee and are yet to come home; it’s just him, bulldog Joy, and his M16 rifle, keeping an eye on the Lebanese villages and Hezbollah outposts clearly visible from the garden, just a few kilometres away.

Lebanese sources say 10 civilians including four children killed in fiercest exchanges since Hamas’s 7 October attack

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The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon that killed three of its fighters and 10 other people, including four children.

A strike on the city of Nabatiyeh late on Wednesday killed seven civilians, including two children, and three members of Hezbollah, sources in Lebanon said. It followed an earlier attack that killed a woman and her two children in the village of Souaneh at the boundary between the two countries.

Cross-border rocket fire raises fears of a broader conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group

Eleven civilians, including six children, have been killed by Israeli strikes on villages across southern Lebanon, a hospital director and local security sources said, while the Israeli army said it lost a soldier in cross-border rocket fire.

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