Sawt Falasteen - UN to meet on Lebanon after Israel takes Beaufort castle

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push deeper into Lebanon and called Sunday's operation a "dramatic shift" in the campaign against Hezbollah.

A truce to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began on April 17, but has never been observed. Both sides accuse each other daily of violating the ceasefire and justify their attacks by the other's alleged breaches.

Diplomatic sources told AFP that the United Nations Security Council would hold an emergency meeting Monday over Israel's expansion of its offensive in the country.

The meeting was requested by France, whose President Emmanuel Macron said "nothing justifies the major escalation under way in south Lebanon", calling for an end to fighting.

Lebanon was dragged into the Middle East war on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets towards Israel in retaliation for the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader.

Israel hit Lebanon over the weekend, with eight people killed in a strike on Deir Zahrani in southern Lebanon on Sunday including three women, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The Iran-backed militant group, meanwhile, said it targeted Israeli forces near the fortress as well as army positions and infrastructure in Shlomi and Nahariya in northern Israel, while air raid sirens blared in the Acre area.

A senior US official told AFP on Sunday that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the ongoing diplomatic negotiations and asserted that Hezbollah must be the first to cease its attacks.

"To advance those talks, the United States proposed a clear sequence: Hezbollah must stop all attacks on Israel. In return, Israel would refrain from escalation in Beirut," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, about the conversations between the three leaders.

Military delegations from Lebanon and Israel held security talks in Washington on Friday and more US-brokered negotiations are planned next week.

In a video statement released after the military took Beaufort, Netanyahu said "we have returned united, determined and stronger than ever".

"Now my directive is to deepen and expand our hold in places that were under Hezbollah's control. The capture of Beaufort is a dramatic stage and a dramatic shift in the policy we are leading."

Israeli forces used the Beaufort castle, also known as Qalaat al-Chakif, as a base during their previous two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.

Shelling was audible and smoke rose from the surrounding area as AFP saw the Israeli flag above the castle.

- 'Impossible to return home -

In a shelter for the displaced in Sidon, southern Lebanon's largest city, Zeinab Fakih, from Nabatieh, told AFP "we are afraid".

"It is impossible for us to return to our home, because the city is in great destruction," she said, adding that the arrival of Israeli forces at the castle was "tragic".

The push to Beaufort came as the Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order to areas south of the Zahrani River, north of the Litani and around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the border.

An Israeli strike near a hospital in Tyre wounded 13 staffers, the Lebanese health ministry said.

A few thousand people remain in Tyre's small old city, spared from Israeli evacuation warnings, some sleeping in their cars.

In Sidon, an AFP photographer saw civil defence teams from the Tyre region reach the city after Israel's military called them to evacuate.

Ali Safieddine, civil defence head in Tyre city, said they have "temporarily relocated to Sidon".

The Israeli army said a Hezbollah explosive drone killed one of its soldiers Saturday, bringing to 25 the number of Israeli military deaths in Lebanon since early March.

It added that "since the start of the ceasefire, 900 Hezbollah terrorists have been eliminated".

Lebanon's health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,412 people since early March.

burs-lkd/jm

M.Qasim--SF-PST