Eleven people, including six children, were killed Wednesday by Israeli strikes on villages in southern Lebanon, a hospital director and three Lebanese security sources said, as Israel said it responded to a Hezbollah rocket attack that killed an Israeli soldier.

Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire along the Israeli-Lebanese border for more than four months after the Lebanese militant group fired rockets at Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.

A woman and her two children were killed by an Israeli strike in the village of al-Shawana, two security sources said.

Wound in a building in Nabatiya claimed the lives of four more children, three women and a man, according to the director of the city’s hospital, Hassan Wazni, and three other sources in the security forces. Seven people were injured, Wazni told Reuters.

Four Hezbollah fighters were killed in separate strikes, according to the group and security sources.

Hezbollah did not announce operations yesterday. The head of its executive council said that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon “cannot go unanswered”.

An Israeli government spokeswoman told reporters that rocket fire from Lebanon yesterday, Wednesday morning, killed one Israeli soldier and left eight others wounded and hospitalized.

“As we have repeatedly made clear, Israel is not interested in a two-front war. But if provoked, we will respond strongly,” spokeswoman Ilana Stein said.

“The current reality, where tens of thousands of Israelis are displaced and unable to return to their homes, is unbearable. They must be able to return to their homes and live in peace and security.”

Stein and the Israeli armed forces announced that the latter responded to cross-border rocket fire from Lebanon.

The head of the Israeli armed forces, Herzi Halevi, who met yesterday with the heads of local communities in northern Israel, said that despite what he said had been achieved against Hezbollah, “it is not time to stop.”

Hezbollah chief Sagent Hasan Nasrallah said yesterday, Tuesday, in a televised speech that his organization would stop the exchanges of fire only if a complete ceasefire in Gaza is achieved.

Cross-border fire has already killed more than 200 people in Lebanon, including more than 170 Hezbollah fighters, as well as at least 12 Israeli soldiers and five Israeli civilians. They have also displaced tens of thousands of people living in the border areas.