Alexis Christoforous has the latest on the developing crisis in the Middle East.

BEIRUT β€” Israel pressed forward on two fronts Wednesday, pursuing a ground incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah that left eight Israeli soldiers dead and conducting strikes in Gaza that killed dozens, including children.

As Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier, the region braced for further escalation.

Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and the Hamas militants who run the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, launched dozens of missiles into Israel on Tuesday night, another escalation in a tit-for-tat cycle that is pushing the Middle East closer to a regional war. Israel warned that the attack would have β€œrepercussions.”

Smoke rises Wednesday from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon.

The Israeli military said seven soldiers were killed in two separate Hezbollah attacks in southern Lebanon, without elaborating. Those deaths followed an earlier announcement of the first Israeli combat death in Lebanon since the start of the incursion.

In Gaza, where the nearly yearlong war that triggered the widening conflict rages with no end in sight, Israeli ground and air operations in a hard-hit city killed at least 51 people, including women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said another 82 were wounded in the operation in Khan Younis that began early Wednesday. Records at the European Hospital showed seven women and 12 children, as young as 22 months old, were among those killed.

Another 23 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.

An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell Wednesday from northern Israel toward Lebanon.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel continued to strike what it claims are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war.

Late Wednesday night, an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in central Beirut, Lebanon. At least six people were killed and seven wounded in the residential Bashoura district. Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following the attack, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using internationally banned phosphorous bombs.

The latest actions on multiple fronts raised fears of a wider conflict that could draw in Iran as well as the United States, which rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday he will not support an Israeli strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program.

β€œThe answer is no,” Biden told reporters when asked if he would support such retaliation.

Biden’s comments came after he and fellow Group of Seven leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom spoke by telephone about coordinating new sanctions against Iran.

The U.S. and allies are scrambling to keep the Mideast conflict from spreading further. They urged Israel to show restraint as it weighs retaliation against Iran for Tuesday’s attack.

Smoke rises Wednesday after an Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Damascus Wednesday evening, killing three people and wounding at least three others. An Associated Press journalist at the scene said the missile appeared to have targeted the bottom floor of a four-story apartment building.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which frequently hits targets linked to Iran or allied groups in Syria, but rarely claims the strikes.

Hezbollah, widely seen as the most powerful armed group in the region, said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in two places inside Lebanon near the border. The Israeli military said ground forces backed by airstrikes killed militants in β€œclose-range engagements,” without saying where.

Israeli media reported infantry and tank units operating in southern Lebanon after the military sent thousands of additional troops and artillery to the border.

The Lebanese army said Israeli forces advanced some 400 yards across the border and withdrew β€œafter a short period,” its first confirmation of the incursion.

The Israeli military warned people in and around 50 villages and towns to evacuate north of the Awali River, some 37 miles from the border and much farther than the northern edge of a U.N.-declared zone intended to serve as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah after their 2006 war. Hundreds of thousands already fled their homes.

Demonstrators hold Iranian, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags and a poster of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a Wednesday rally commemorating slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Tehran, Iran.

Israel says it will continue striking Hezbollah until tens of thousands of its citizens displaced from homes near the Lebanon border can safely return. Hezbollah vows to keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon over the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry.

Meanwhile, Israel lashed out at the United Nations, declaring Secretary-General AntΓ³nio Guterres persona non grata, or banned from entering the country. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused him of failing to unequivocally condemn Tuesday night’s Iranian missile attack.

Guterres released a brief statement after the barrage saying: β€œI condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a cease-fire.”

The move deepens an already wide rift between Israel and the United Nations.

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