Israel struck the historic port city of Tyre in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, in an escalation that adds strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war. On Monday, Israel and Iran halted direct attacks on each other after an appeal by US President Donald Trump, but Tehran warned it would resume hostilities if Israel continued to attack its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. The raids were the deadliest on Tyre since fighting erupted in Lebanon in early March, when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in support of Tehran after Israel and the United States began their war against Iran. Israel had issued an evacuation order for the city earlier on Tuesday. Residents fled and civil defense teams transported elderly residents into temporary shelters, state media reported. The eight victims were killed in a single strike on the city's eastern edge, Lebanon's health ministry said. A video verified by Reuters showed debris strewn across a road at the site of the attack. Israel's refusal to end its campaign in Lebanon, as Iran demands, has hindered Trump's efforts to extend a tenuous ceasefire in the wider US-Israeli war with Iran into a durable settlement. US and Israeli officials said Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spoken on Monday. In an interview with Axios, Trump said he had warned the Israeli leader not to return to war with Iran: "I said, 'Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon.'" Tehran has long said any peace deal with the US depends in part on an end to fighting in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah fighters who had fired across the border. In northern Israel on Tuesday, Israeli troops operating in the Ramim Ridge area close to Lebanon's border killed one person in an incident in which they returned fire, the military said. Israel has never halted its Lebanon campaign, which has killed thousands of people, saying the conflict should be treated separately from any US-Iranian ceasefire. Hezbollah has also continued its attacks.
