ANKARA

An Israeli Navy soldier was killed in cross-border attacks with Hezbollah on Sunday amid rising escalation along the Israeli-Lebanese border, according to Israeli authorities.

The Mateh Binyamin Regional Council in the occupied West Bank said the slain soldier was a resident of the illegal Adam settlement near occupied East Jerusalem.

It said the soldier was serving in the Israeli Navy and was killed during a clash in northern Israel, without providing any details about the circumstances of his death.

Israeli warplanes launched over 40 airstrikes on southern Lebanon early Sunday, the most severe attack since cross-border attacks with Hezbollah began on Oct. 8, 2023. The Israeli army claimed that the strikes aimed to prevent an impending Hezbollah attack.

The Lebanese group, for its part, said it launched hundreds of missiles and drones deep into Israel in the “first phase” of its response to last month’s assassination of its commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut.

Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah has been engaged in daily exchanges of fire with the Israeli army across the Blue Line, resulting in hundreds of casualties, mostly on the Lebanese side.

The escalation comes against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 40,400 Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas incursion. The military campaign has reduced much of the territory to rubble and left most of the people homeless, hungry and prone to disease.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi