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Israeli forces and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah traded aerial attacks along the border Thursday in the latest of months of exchanges that have raised fears of the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip spreading to a wider regional conflict.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets at Israeli bases in an attack that also employed the use of "explosive drones." The Iranian-backed group said it was acting in response to Israel's killing of one of its commanders Wednesday.
The Hezbollah attack prompted air raid sirens across northern Israel. The Israeli military said it intercepted many of the projectiles and carried out fresh airstrikes against launch positions in Lebanon.
The violence came as Israeli officials considered a Hamas response to the latest version of a cease-fire proposal that would include the release of hostages held in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that Israel was studying "some ideas" that Hamas sent to Qatari mediators.
On Thursday, a government official said Israel dispatched a delegation to negotiate a hostage release deal with Hamas. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is preparing a meeting with his security cabinet to discuss new Hamas positions on a deal.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu on Thursday spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden, who has tried to orchestrate a truce for months. Netanyahu told Biden of his decision to send a delegation to continue negotiations for the release of the hostages, according to media reports.
"The President welcomed the Prime Minister's decision to authorize his negotiators to engage with U.S., Qatari, and Egyptian mediators in an effort to close out the deal," the White House said in a statement.
"President Biden reaffirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel's security including in the face of threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah," the statement added
The mediators - Qatar, Egypt and the United States - have worked for months to reach a deal that would free the hostages and cease hostilities. The ideas that Hamas delivered Wednesday involve the three-phase deal Biden put on the table in late May.
Meanwhile, the United Nations has expressed concern over Israel's latest evacuation order for large parts of Khan Younis and Rafah governorates, encompassing about a third of the Gaza Strip and affecting up to 250,000 civilians.
"What we saw in the last two days, since Monday afternoon when the evacuation order was issued, we have seen a constant flow of people moving out," said Andrea De Domenico, the head of the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories.
He told reporters in a video briefing Wednesday from Jerusalem that U.N. aid agencies and their partners are having to reset their operations following Israel's evacuation order.
"Delivering for us is a daily struggle - literally," he said.
Israel has repeatedly told Palestinians to leave certain parts of Gaza, usually ahead of military offensives, in a move Israel says is meant to protect civilians from the war. The evacuations, along with the fighting, have meant people have had to flee multiple times in search of safety.
De Domenico said the U.N. estimates that 9 out of every 10 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced at least once, and some up to 10 times, since the war started between Israel and Hamas in October.
He said most people on the move this week have headed toward the coastal area, where Israel has established a so-called safe zone. De Domenico said the area is overcrowded and overwhelmed, with little clean water, few toilets and limited basic services.
"Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza," De Domenico said. "We keep on saying this. We have seen over and over military operations and bombardment happening also in the heart of the humanitarian safe zone declared by Israel."
Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza erupted when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, staging a terror attack that killed about 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 38,000 people and injured more than 87,000 others, according to the health ministry in Gaza, and left the densely built-up coastal enclave in ruins.
VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.