Strikes hit hills and valleys as Israeli military keeps up pressure, it says, to force Hezbollah to disarm.

Israeli warplanes have carried out at least a dozen attacks across southern Lebanon, targeting what the military claims are Hezbollah training facilities in the latest flagrant near-daily violations that have further undermined a year-old ceasefire.

The raids hit hills and valleys in the Jezzine and Zahrani areas, including locations near al-Aaichiyeh, between al-Zrariyeh and Ansar, and around Jabal al-Rafie and the outskirts of several towns, according to Lebanon’s state news agency.

Israel’s military said it struck a compound used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force for weapons training, claiming the facilities were being used to plan attacks against Israeli forces and civilians.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the attacks avoided densely populated areas. “The locations were in hills and valleys, not population centres,” she said, noting this marked a repeated pattern.

“In fact, just a few days ago, in the middle of the night, they did the same thing.”

The Israeli military said it also hit what it said were rocket-launching sites and other infrastructure, describing the operations as necessary to counter what it deemed violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.

However, the continued bombardment has drawn sharp criticism from the United Nations, which reported in November that at least 127 civilians, including children, have been killed in Lebanon since the ceasefire took effect in late 2024. UN officials have warned the attacks amount to “war crimes”.

Khodr explained that the attacks form part of a sustained military pressure campaign.

“This is all part of military pressure on Hezbollah to force it to disarm,” she said. Israel wants the group “to give up its strategic weapons, its long-range weapons, its precision-guided missiles, its drones” which the Israeli military believes are stored in the Bekaa Valley and further inland.

But Hezbollah has sharply refused to relinquish its arsenal as long as Israel bombards and occupies parts of Lebanon. The group “doesn’t want to give up its weapons because it would view that as surrender”, Khodr added, noting that “Hezbollah and Lebanon do not have the upper hand. Israel enjoys air superiority.”

Tensions escalated further two weeks ago when Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing Hezbollah’s top military commander, Haytham Ali Tabatabai. The group has yet to respond, but said it will do so at the right time.

The attacks come as Lebanon and Israel recently dispatched civilian envoys to a committee monitoring their ceasefire for the first time in decades, a move aimed at expanding diplomatic engagement.

However, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem criticised Lebanon’s decision to send former Ambassador Simon Karam to the talks, calling it a “free concession” to Israel.

Lebanese officials have expressed frustration over Israel’s near-daily attacks.

“It is one of the reasons why Lebanon agreed to sit down for face-to-face talks with the Israelis,” Khodr said, “engaging in diplomatic talks that are seen as very sensitive in Lebanon, in the hopes that it would avoid war.”

President Joseph Aoun said last week that Lebanon “has adopted the option of negotiations with Israel” aimed at stopping the continued attacks, while Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called for a more robust verification mechanism to monitor both Israeli violations and Lebanese army efforts to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure.

“But the US ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, made it clear a few days ago that even though Lebanon is sitting down in a room with a longtime enemy, it does not mean that the Israeli attacks will stop,” Khodr said.

Some 200 West African soldiers, mainly from Nigeria and Ivory Coast, are in Benin to support the government following Sunday’s failed coup, Benin’s foreign minister says.

The attempt was foiled after Nigeria deployed fighter jets to drive the mutineers out of a military base and state TV headquarters, where they had declared a takeover.

This is the first time that officials have said how many foreign soldiers were deployed to the country, although it is not clear if some have been withdrawn since Sunday.

Benin’s Foreign Affairs Minister Olushegun Adjadi Bakari on Thursday said some of the regional troops sent to help had remained in the country “as part of the sweep and clean-up operation”.

A manhunt for those involved in the plot is under way, with the leader of the failed coup said to be taking refuge in neighbouring Togo.

The rebel soldiers justified their actions by criticising President Patrice Talon’s management of the country, complaining first about his handling of the “continuing deterioration of the security situation in northern Benin”.

The West African regional bloc, Ecowas, deployed troops from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast to secure key installations and prevent any resurgence of the violence.

Nigeria, Benin’s large neighbour to the east, said its soldiers had reached there on Sunday, describing the coup attempt as a “direct assault on democracy”.

An Ivory Coast security source told AFP news agency that 50 soldiers from the country had been sent as part of the regional deployment.

“There are currently around 200 soldiers present, who came to lend a hand at the end of the day to the Beninese defence and security forces as part of the sweep and clean-up operation,” said Bakari, while addressing journalists in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Thursday.

Bakari, who was speaking alongside Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, said that by the time the Beninese forces called for help, the coup “was already a failure”.

“When we started discussions for the intervention of Nigeria and the others, under Ecowas protocol, our military had already pushed them back,” he added.

According to Bakari, what was required was “precise aerial back-up to carry out a surgical operation that targeted the enemy’s key positions without risking civilian casualties”.

Tuggar said that fast diplomatic, military, and intelligence actions between Nigeria and Benin had helped to foil the coup.

Discussions are continuing over how long the regional forces would remain, but Bakari said any decision “will be taken in close collaboration with Benin’s defence and security forces, who have demonstrated their bravery”.

It is not clear if the French special forces who also reportedly helped loyalist troops thwart the coup are still in Benin.

Under intense pressure after a string of successful coups in the region, Ecowas is signalling that it is no longer willing to watch democratically elected governments be toppled by the military.

Bakari praised Ecowas as “an important tool that allows us to defend democracy and the values of democracy in our regional space”.

Benin’s army has suffered losses near its northern border with insurgency-hit Niger and Burkina Faso in recent years, as jihadist militants linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda spread southwards.

Talon, who is regarded as a close ally of the West, is due to step down next year after completing his second term in office, with elections scheduled for April.

A strong, 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck in the North Pacific Ocean on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The temblor happened at 11:44 a.m. Japan time about 71 miles northeast of Hachinohe, Japan, data from the agency shows.

The earthquake came just days after a larger quake struck the same area and while parts of Japan’s coastline were under a mega quake advisory.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the reported magnitude of the latest quake. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.

Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.