The mayor of a major town in south Lebanon was among 16 people killed when an Israeli airstrike destroyed its municipal headquarters in the biggest attack on an official Lebanese state building since the Israeli air campaign began.

Lebanese officials denounced the incident, which also wounded more than 50 people in Nabatieh, a provincial capital, saying it was proof that Israel's campaign against the Hezbollah armed group was now shifting to target the Lebanese state, Reuters reported.

The Israelis "intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council to discuss the city's service and relief situation" to aid people displaced by the Israeli campaign, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said.

Israel launched its ground and air campaign in Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah after a year during which the Iran-backed militant group fired across the border in support of Palestinian militants Hamas in Gaza.

Fears of a regional conflict have grown after Israel promised to retaliate for an Iranian missile attack on Oct. 1.

The U.S. said on Wednesday it struck five underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the latest in more than a dozen U.S. attacks on Houthi-linked targets this month.

Iran-aligned Houthi fighters in Yemen who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel's year-long war in Gaza have carried out nearly 100 attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November.

Israel also launched strikes at Syria's Mediterranean port city of Latakia early on Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Firefighters are working on extinguishing fires that had broken out, SANA added, while Syrian state television reported the country's air defences had confronted Israeli targets over

Latakia.

EVACUATION NOTICE

Israel first issued an evacuation notice for Nabatieh, a city of tens of thousands of people, on Oct. 3. At the time, the city's Mayor Ahmed Kahil told Reuters he would not leave.

Asked about Israeli strike on Nabatieh, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller declined to comment on the circumstances of specific strikes but said the U.S. understands Hezbollah operates from places including civilian homes and supported limited strikes to target the group.

"Obviously, we'd not want to see entire villages destroyed. We don't want to see civilian homes destroyed," Miller said.

Israel said on Wednesday it struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the Nabatieh area and its navy also hit dozens of targets in southern Lebanon.

It said it had "dismantled" a tunnel network used by Hezbollah's elite Radwan Forces in the heart of a town near the border with Israel, publishing a video showing multiple explosions rocking a cluster of buildings. Lebanese officials said it was the small town of Mhaibib.

Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.

Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.

PEACEKEEPERS REPORT MORE FIRE

The U.N. mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said its peacekeepers observed an Israeli tank firing at their watchtower near southern Lebanon's Kfar Kela on Wednesday morning. Two cameras were destroyed, and the tower was damaged, UNIFIL said.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the UNIFIL statement.

Israel has previously called on the United Nations to move members of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon out of the combat zone for their safety.

UNIFIL says its troops have come under Israeli attack several times, though Israel has disputed accounts of those incidents.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, on a visit to northern Israel near the border, said Israel would not halt its assault on Hezbollah to allow negotiations.

"We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here," he said according to a statement from his office.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin on Wednesday spoke to Gallant and "reinforced the importance of taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security of UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Armed Forces," according to the Department of Defense.

At least one Israeli strike hit Beirut's southern suburbs early on Wednesday morning, Reuters witnesses said, hours after the U.S. said it opposed the scope of Israeli attacks in Beirut amid a rising death toll and fears of wider regional escalation.

Reuters witnesses heard two blasts and saw plumes of smoke emerging from two separate neighborhoods. It came after Israel issued an evacuation order early on Wednesday which mentioned only one building.

The Israeli military has in recent weeks carried out strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, without advance warnings, or issued a warning for one area while striking more broadly.

The Israeli military said it conducted a strike on an underground Hezbollah weapons stockpile in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh.

"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area," the Israeli military said.

Israeli military evacuation orders were also affecting more than a quarter of Lebanon, according to the U.N. refugee agency, two weeks after Israel began incursions into the south of the country that it says are aimed at driving back Hezbollah.

Some Western countries have been pushing for a ceasefire between the two neighbors, as well as in Gaza, though the United States says it continues to support Israel and was sending an anti-missile system and troops.

On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S. had expressed its concerns to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration on the recent strikes.

"When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it's something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to," he told reporters, adopting a harsher tone than Washington has taken so far.

The last time Beirut was hit was on Oct. 10, when two strikes near the city center killed 22 people and brought down entire buildings in a densely populated neighborhood.

The United States is "concerned" by reports of North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine, a White House spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week accused North Korea of transferring personnel to Russia's armed forces, saying his intelligence agencies had briefed him on "the actual involvement of North Korea in the war" in Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The Kremlin has dismissed the allegation as "fake news."

White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said the involvement of North Korean troops in Ukraine, if true, would mark a significant increase in the North Korea-Russia defense relationship.

"Such a move would also indicate a new level of desperation for Russia as it continues to suffer significant casualties on the battlefield in its brutal war against Ukraine," Savett said in a statement.

Washington says North Korea has supplied Russia with ballistic missiles and ammunition. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied arms transfers but have vowed to boost military ties, possibly including joint drills, read the report.

The U.S. Army's Indo-Pacific commander, General Charles Flynn, told an event in Washington that North Korean personnel being involved in the conflict would allow Pyongyang to get real-time feedback on its weapons, something that had not been possible in the past.

"That's different because they are providing capabilities and – open source reporting – there's manpower that is also over there," he said at the Center for a New American Security.

"That kind of feedback from a real battlefield to North Korea to be able to make adjustments to their weapons, their ammunition, their capabilities, and even their people – to me, is very concerning," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang in June, and said it included a mutual assistance clause under which each side agreed to help the other repel external aggression, Reuters reported.