Israel hammered south Lebanon with strikes on Tuesday ahead of talks between the two countries in Washington, as Beirut reported 380 people killed in Israeli attacks since an April 17 ceasefire took effect.

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem vowed to turn the battlefield into “hell” for Israeli forces, and insisted his Iran-backed group’s weapons would not be up for discussion at the talks on Thursday and Friday, after the US had called for its disarmament.

Israel has intensified its attacks on south Lebanon, where it continues to trade fire with Hezbollah despite the ceasefire. Under the truce terms released by Washington, Israel reserves the right to act against imminent threats.

Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike on Tuesday targeted a civil defence team responding to an earlier raid in the southern city of Nabatieh, killing two rescuers and the wounded person they went to save.

The ministry decried Israel’s “complete disregard for all international norms”.

Hezbollah has also been carrying out attacks, including several on Tuesday, both against Israeli troops who have invaded south Lebanon and across the border, saying they are in response to Israeli ceasefire violations.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine told a press conference on Tuesday that since the ceasefire, “380 people have been killed and 1,122 wounded”.

A ministry official told AFP that the toll includes 39 women and 22 children.

‘Massacre’

Nassereddine decried a “systematic, ongoing attack on civilians”, and described the ceasefire as “fragile and ineffective”.

Save the Children said in a statement that “more than four children have been killed or injured every day on average in Lebanon in the first 25 days” of the truce.

Its Lebanon country director, Nora Ingdal said, “attacks on civilians have not stopped — it has simply continued under another name”.

In addition to its ongoing air raids, Israel’s troops are operating behind a “yellow line” that runs around 10 kilometres (six miles) inside Lebanon, and have issued evacuation warnings for dozens of villages in the south and east ahead of strikes, including on Tuesday.

The overall toll from Israeli attacks since the war erupted on March 2 has reached 2,882 people, including 279 women and 200 children, Nassereddine said.

Some 108 emergency and health workers were also among the dead, he noted, before the latest civil defence deaths.

“It’s a massacre… there are no armed men or fighters in these (ambulance) vehicles, just paramedics, medical equipment and wounded,” he added.

Israel has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances and medical facilities for military purposes, an accusation the group denies.

‘Hell’

Israel’s military said Tuesday that over the past week, its troops had conducted a “special operation to clear terrorist infrastructure” from south Lebanon’s Litani region “and establish operational control in the area”.

Hezbollah’s Qassem vowed that “we will not abandon the battlefield and we will turn it into hell for Israel”.

Last week, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott hd said “comprehensive peace is contingent on the full restoration of Lebanese state authority and the complete disarmament” of Hezbollah.

But Qassem said his group’s weapons were “an internal Lebanese matter” and again rejected Lebanon’s direct talks with Israel, calling for authorities to withdraw ahead of the upcoming round.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East conflict on March 2 when it launched rockets at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes.