Beirut: Nine civilians including four children have been killed in a barrage of Israeli strikes on villages across southern Lebanon, a hospital director and three Lebanese security sources said, as Israel said it responded to Hezbollah rockets that killed a soldier.

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

A strike on a building in Nabatieh killed two more children, three women and a man, according to the director of the town’s hospital, Hassan Wazni, and three other security sources. Seven others arrived at the hospital for treatment after the strike, Wazni told Reuters.

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

Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire for more than four months, after the Lebanese armed group launched rockets across the disputed frontier in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which had launched a deadly assault on Israel.

Hezbollah did not announce any operations on Wednesday. The head of its executive council said that Israel’s attacks onto Lebanese territory on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) could “not pass without a response”.

An Israeli government spokesperson told journalists that rocket barrages from Lebanon on Wednesday morning had left one Israeli woman dead and another eight hospitalised. The military later said the woman who was killed was a soldier.

“As we have made clear time and time again, Israel is not interested in a war on two fronts. But if provoked, we will respond forcefully,” said spokesperson Ilana Stein.