BEIRUT (AP) — Israel’s air force carried out an airstrike on a southern suburb of Lebanon's capital on Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military said, further straining a fragile ceasefire a day before crucial negotiations in Washington.

The strike hit an apartment building, but the target of the attack wasn't immediately clear. White smoke billowed from a residential neighborhood in the suburb of Choueifat, close to Beirut's international airport.

Tensions have been increasing in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops recently crossed the strategic Litani River, which the Israeli military has used as a de facto boundary. Large areas to the south are under Israeli military control, despite the Washington-brokered ceasefire from April 17.

This was the first attack close to Beirut since May 6, when an Israeli strike killed a military official with Hezbollah militant group’s elite Radwan Forces in another southern suburb.

Overnight, Israeli forces pounded Tyre, Lebanon's fourth-largest city, and killed at least 14 people across the south of the country in their ongoing military escalation against Hezbollah before the Lebanon-Israel talks in Washington.

Five women and children and a Lebanese soldier were among those killed in the strikes. Dozens of others were wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and the state-run National News Agency, or NNA.

The Israeli military said, meanwhile, that one of its soldiers was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the widespread attacks on Tyre and Nabatiyeh, describing them as “onslaughts” and calling the ongoing displacement “collective punishment.”

“This only strengthens our resolve for the necessity of an immediate ceasefire, working toward a complete Israeli withdrawal from our land,” Salam said in a social media post.

Lebanese minister seeks end to Tyre attacks

On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli military issued another evacuation warning for Tyre and its suburbs.

Considered one of the oldest metropolises of the world, Tyre has several archaeological sites, some of them submerged. The city was officially declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1984.

Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi said in a statement Thursday that he's been following “with deep pain and profound concern” the ongoing Israeli attacks on Tyre.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced an expansion of the Israeli military's attacks in Lebanon, apparently sparked by Hezbollah's use of fiber-optic exploding drones that have struck Israeli troops in Lebanon and reached some of Israel's northern border towns. The Israeli military said that it has launched hundreds of attacks targeting what it said were Hezbollah military assets.

Lebanese and Israeli military officials will hold their first security talks on Friday in Washington. Despite the nominal ceasefire, Israeli attacks have recently intensified, while largely sparing Beirut.

Hezbollah has dismissed the talks, and has repeatedly called on Lebanon's leadership to withdraw from them. The militant group believes that Beirut doesn't have the leverage to stop the war and have Israel withdraw its troops.

“The ruling authority persists in pursuing a downward trajectory, compromising both sovereignty and rights under the pretext that it is compelled to continue direct negotiations with the enemy,” Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc said in a statement Thursday.

The group instead endorsed its key ally Iran, which has made ending the war in Lebanon a condition for its own talks with Washington brokered by Pakistan.

“Yet, instead of seizing this opportunity, the Lebanese authorities are attempting to undermine it — actively working to obstruct it, even at the cost of their own people’s blood,” the statement said.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that Netanyahu instructed the military “to deepen our operation in Lebanon” to protect the communities of Israel’s north.

Mencer said that Israel would continue U.S.-mediated negotiations with Lebanon in Washington, saying that the talks aim to disarm Hezbollah and reach “a peace agreement that will strengthen security and stability in our region and promote prosperity and peace."

Further north in the city of Sidon, an Israeli drone struck an apartment building where some displaced families lived, killing five people and wounding 21 others, among them five children.

Mohammad Al-Gharbi, who lived across the street from the building in Sidon, woke to the sound of the explosion.

“I was in my room when part of the wall and shattered glass fell on me, and everything was thrown into chaos,” he said. “This building that was hit had six apartments occupied by poor families who had fled from the south to escape the attacks there, only to be hit here.”

In the nearby coastal town of Adloun, an Israeli drone struck a car with a family that was fleeing, killing six people, of which four were two children and their parents, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Another drone strike that came without warning killed two people on a motorcycle near Tyre. The target of the attack wasn't immediately clear, NNA reported.

Elsewhere near the city of Nabatiyeh, the Lebanese military said that a soldier was killed in an Israeli drone strike while he was riding his motorcycle.

Hezbollah attacks target Israeli forces

The Israeli military said Thursday that a soldier in northern Israel was killed in a Hezbollah drone attack and two reservists were wounded.

Hezbollah says it has carried out dozens of drone and rocket attacks targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. The group said Thursday that it launched several attacks on Israeli troops and tanks that have crossed the Litani River into the town of Zawtar al-Sharqieh near Nabatiyeh, as close-range fighting continues.

More than 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced by the Israel-Hezbollah war, which was sparked when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Iran, two days after the Iran war began.

At least 3,269 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since the start of the war, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, with more than 9,800 wounded.

According to Netanyahu’s office, at least 23 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, the vast majority by drones.

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Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel, and Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.

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