A local Hezbollah official, Hussein Yazbek, has been killed along with eight other members of the group in Israeli strikes on Wednesday amid Lebanese border clashes.

    Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says his fighters are not afraid of war, but avoided any declaration that his forces would escalate attacks against Israel, in his first speech since Saleh al-Arouri was killed by an Israeli drone strike in Beirut.

    Israeli attacks kill 20 Palestinians in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis.

    At least 22,313 people have been killed and at least 57,296 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll from Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel stands at 1,139.

    Palestinian fighters are continuing to do battle behind the Israeli military’s forward lines of advance in Gaza City, and are fighting to stop Israeli forces “clearing” the Daraj and Tuffah neighbourhoods of the city, war monitors said.

    The US-based Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project said that Hamas fighters are surveilling Israeli forces using drones and that smaller Palestinian groups carried out an “elaborate ambush” on Israeli soldiers near the al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza.

    Palestinian fighters also claimed to have shot down Israeli drones, the monitors said.

    “The [Qassam] Brigades claimed that it seized an Israeli drone south of Zaytoun neighbourhood in the southern Gaza Strip on January 3. The militia fired anti-tank rockets at Israeli armor in Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood, where Israeli forces have not reported on clearing operations since mid-November,” the monitors said.

    Intense ground fighting is also continuing around Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, they added.