The Israeli army said that roughly 25 rockets crossed into Israel from Lebanon as part of the volley that struck an olive grove.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said its medics confirmed the deaths of a man and a woman in a suburb of the northern city of Haifa. They also treated two other people who suffered mild injuries and were hospitalized.

The deadly attack came just hours after local officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that projectiles fired from Lebanon had struck an agricultural area, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer.

Metula is Israel’s northernmost town, surrounded by Lebanon on three sides. The town’s residents evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.

Agricultural areas along Israel’s border are closed military areas that can only be entered with official permission.

Hezbollah’s newly named top leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in a video statement Wednesday that the Lebanese group will keep fighting Israel until it is offered cease-fire terms it deems acceptable.

He said the resistance group has recovered from a series of setbacks in recent months, including Israeli deadly attacks using explosive pagers and walkie-talkies.

“Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said.

Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli army warned people to evacuate from more areas of southern Lebanon, as airstrikes in different parts of the country killed eight people, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.

Israel has orderd people to evacuate from large areas of the country, including major cities in the south and east. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced since the escalation in September.

Thousands of people have fled from Baalbek, the main city in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, and surrounding areas after Israeli evacuation orders and aerial bombardment on Wednesday.

Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region, some 17 kilometres (10 miles) to the southeast, said the main highway “turned into a parking lot.” He said around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, most hosted in private homes.

Families with luggage were still arriving on Thursday at one of the shelters.

“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing —no clothes or anything else — and took shelter here.”

Israel has killed more than 2,800 people in Lebanon and injured nearly 13,000, mostly civilians, since the aggression began last year, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

In Israel, at least 68 people, about half of them soldiers, were killed. 

* This story was edited by Ahram Online.