The Israeli military issued forced displacement orders for a dozen Lebanese towns and villages on Wednesday, including in the Bekaa Valley.
It comes as a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah – in effect since April 16 – continues to be broken by both sides regularly.
In the Bekaa Valley, the village of Zellaya was among those with a displacement order imposed. Soon after, at least five people were killed in an air strike, including the village mayor Ali Ahmad, his wife and two children.
The valley, which stretches across eastern Lebanon, was where Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s and it remains an important support base both militarily and for civilians.
While the Bekaa has been targeted in the current war, there have been fewer strikes there than on Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon.
Israeli air strikes on the village of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon district killed at least four and left 13 injured on Wednesday.
The Israeli military has been issuing displacement orders for around a dozen towns and villages a day for the past week, in the area north of its buffer zone, or so-called Yellow Line, in south Lebanon.
The Yellow Line amounts to Israel's latest occupation of the south of the country, extending up to 10 kilometres into Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah continues to launch attacks on Israeli positions in south Lebanon. On Wednesday, the Israeli army reported two soldiers were wounded by explosive drones launched by Hezbollah near Israeli soldiers deployed in the border region.
Also on Wednesday, there was extensive Israeli drone activity over Beirut, which had been relatively subdued in recent days.
The Lebanese government, under pressure from the US, is seeking direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Wednesday that "Lebanon is not seeking to normalise its relations with Israel, but rather to make peace". He said the "minimum requirement" in the negotiations is to obtain a "clear timetable" for Israel's withdrawal from the south of the country.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a day earlier that a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon appears “achievable” in the near term, and blamed the current violence on Hezbollah.
“There’s no problem between the Lebanese government and the Israeli government,” Mr Rubio said at a White House media conference. “Israel doesn’t claim any land in Lebanon belongs to them. And, by and large, I think a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel is imminently achievable.”
He said the reason Israel attacks Lebanon is “because Hezbollah is hiding in some house launching rockets against Israelis, and then they get hit".
