Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ceasefire suspending the six-week-old US-Israeli war against Iran did not apply to Lebanon, and the Israeli military said it was continuing its operations against Hezbollah there.
"The battle in Lebanon continues, and the ceasefire does not include Lebanon," Israel's military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a statement on X on Wednesday, while reiterating evacuation orders affecting large swathes of southern Lebanon.
Israel's stance contradicted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire talks, who had said the truce would include Lebanon.
The Lebanese state news agency NNA reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including artillery shelling and a dawn air strike on a building near a hospital that killed four people.
An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 22 others, Lebanon's health ministry said.
Hezbollah stopped attacking Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters.
The group was likely to issue a statement outlining its formal position on the ceasefire and on Netanyahu's assertion that Lebanon was not included, the three Lebanese sources said.
Israel has issued evacuation orders covering about 15 per cent of Lebanese territory since March 2, mostly in the south and in suburbs south of the capital Beirut.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon, the authorities say.
A senior Lebanese official told Reuters that Lebanon had received no guarantees or other information on its inclusion in the two-week ceasefire, and had not been involved in talks.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, welcoming the US-Iran ceasefire, said Beirut would continue its efforts to ensure that Lebanon was included in any lasting regional peace agreement.
More than 1500 people have been killed in Israel's air and ground campaign across Lebanon since March 2, including more than 130 children and more than 100 women.
By late March, more than 400 Hezbollah fighters had been killed, sources told Reuters.
At least 10 Israeli troops have been killed in southern Lebanon in the same period, the Israeli military has said.
Israel has pledged to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of a "security zone" it says is aimed at protecting its own northern residents.
