An Israeli airstrike killed at least 23 people in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut and far from the areas in southern and eastern Lebanon where the militant Hezbollah group has a major presence. Lebanon's Health Ministry said a further six people were wounded. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military reported on Tuesday. The dead soldiers were non-commissioned officers aged 20 and 21, it said. Israeli media reports said they were killed when an antitank weapon fired by Palestinian forces struck a building where they were sheltering in the Jabalia refugee camp to the north of Gaza City.