Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire early Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely-feared all-out war, as both sides signaled their most intense exchange in months was over.

The cross-border attacks came as high-level talks resumed in Egypt aimed at a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that also would ease regional tensions.

Hezbollah claimed to hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv in a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones, and Israel claimed its strikes had been pre-emptive to avert a larger attack. The Associated Press said neither offered evidence.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the attack, a response to Israel’s killing of a top militant commander in Beirut last month, had been delayed to give the Gaza cease-fire talks a chance, and so fellow Iran-backed groups could discuss with Iran whether to attack Israel all at once. Israeli and US military deployment also played a role.

“We will now reserve the right to respond at a later time” if the results of Sunday’s attack aren’t sufficient, Nasrallah said, adding that allied Houthi rebels in Yemen – and Iran itself – had yet to respond. But he told the Lebanese people: “At this current stage, the country can take a breath and relax.”

Israel and Hezbollah said they aimed only at military targets. Israel said no military target was hit, but one soldier with its navy was killed and two others were wounded either by an interceptor for incoming fire, or by shrapnel from one. Two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group were killed, the groups said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military eliminated thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel and shot down drones heading for the centre of the country. “I repeat: this is not the end of the story,” he added.

Flights diverted as air raid sirens wail

Air raid sirens were reported throughout northern Israel, and Israel’s international airport closed and diverted flights for about an hour. Israel’s Home Front Command later lifted restrictions in most areas.

Israel’s military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said about 100 Israeli planes struck 270 targets, 90 per cent of them rocket launchers aimed at northern Israel. He said they were investigating the percentage of incoming rockets and drones intercepted but said the “vast majority” were thwarted.

Hezbollah said its attack involved more than 320 Katyusha rockets aimed at multiple sites in Israel and a “large number” of drones.

Lebanon’s caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam, said after an emergency government meeting, officials were “feeling a bit more optimistic” about a de-escalation. “We feel more reassured since both sides confirmed that the expected operations ended,” he said.

President Biden was “closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon,” said Sean Savett, a spokesman for the National Security Council. The Pentagon said Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, and ordered both US carrier strike groups to stay in the region.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, arrived in Israel late Sunday for meetings on what the Israeli military called “joint preparations in the region as part of the response to threats in the Middle East”.

All-out war apparently averted… for now

Danny Citrinowicz, an expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Hezbollah might be trying to “balance the equation without escalating into war”. Each side hopes their narrative will be sufficient for them to declare victory and avoid a wider confrontation, he said.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel almost immediately after the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ October 7 attack into southern Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, is believed to be far more powerful now. The United States and Israel estimate it has some 150,000 rockets and is capable of hitting anywhere inside Israel. The group has also developed drones capable of evading Israel’s defences, as well as precision-guided munitions.

Israel has vowed a crushing response to any major Hezbollah attack. It has an extensive multi-tiered missile defence system, and it is backed by a US-led coalition that helped it shoot down hundreds of missiles and drones fired from Iran earlier this year. The US military has been building up its forces across the region in recent weeks.

Hezbollah is a close ally of Iran, which has also threatened to retaliate against Israel for the killing of a senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran last month. Israel has not said whether it was involved.

Iranian state media on Sunday played up the Hezbollah attack, calling it a success, but there was no immediate comment from Iranian officials.

The US and other mediators see a cease-fire in Gaza as key to averting a wider Mideast war. Hezbollah has said it will halt its strikes on Israel if there is a cease-fire.

Egypt was hosting high-level talks in Cairo on Sunday aimed at bridging the gaps in a proposal for a truce and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas. The talks include CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Hamas sent a delegation to be briefed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators but was not directly taking part in negotiations.

Hamas rejects new Israeli conditions in Gaza ceasefire-hostage talks

Hamas said on Sunday that it rejects new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire-hostage talks, casting further doubt on the chances of a breakthrough in the latest US-backed effort to end the 10-month-old war.

Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the terrorist group’s October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Key sticking points in ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar include an Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5 km-long stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Hamas said Israel has backtracked on a commitment to withdraw troops from the Corridor and put forward other new conditions, including the screening of displaced Palestinians as they return to the enclave’s more heavily populated north when the ceasefire begins.

“We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.

Russian missile hits Ukraine hotel, killing member of UK journalist team

A British safety adviser working with a team of journalists was killed after a Russian missile struck a hotel in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, Reuters news agency confirmed.

Ryan Evans, 38, was staying at the Hotel Sapphire with colleagues in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region when it was hit by a Russian missile Saturday night.

Two other members of the six-person Reuters crew were hospitalised with injuries.

Local officials said the hotel was struck by an Iskander-M Russian ballistic missile, leaving the reporters with blast injuries, concussions and cuts on the body.

Associated Press reporters at the scene described the hotel as “rubble,” with excavators being used to clear debris hours after the attack.

Besides the hotel, a nearby multi-storey building was also destroyed, said Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin.

Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region also came under Russian fire, resulting in multiple civilian injuries, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app Sunday.

In Kharkiv’s Chuhuiv region, five people were injured, including a four-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, after two houses were hit by a Russian strike.

In Kharkiv city, eight people were wounded when a two-story house was set on fire by a Russian attack.

In Russia, five people died in Ukrainian shelling in of the border region of Belgorod, officials said Sunday.

Twelve other people were wounded in the Russian village of Rakitone, 38 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, including a 16-year-old girl reported to be in critical condition, said regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov on Sunday. Another man also died in a separate drone attack on the border village of Solovevka, he wrote later on social media.

Four injured in Sydney stabbing attack

Four people including a police officer were injured in a stabbing attack in Sydney early on Sunday, police said, the latest in a series of knife assaults in Australia’s biggest city this year.

A man who ran from the scene has been taken into custody, police said in a statement. There is no ongoing threat to people in Sydney, said New South Wales State Police Minister Yasmin Catley.

Police said no one was killed in the attack, which came after a “domestic-related” incident in a car that collided with another vehicle in the southern suburb of Engadine.

Bayesian’s Commander Cutfield investigated – La Repubblica

James Cutfield, commander of the Bayesian, the yacht that sank last Monday in Porticello, near Palermo, is being investigated for shipwreck and multiple manslaughter. Seven people died in the accident, according to the online edition of La Repubblica.

Cutfield was questioned for two hours on Sunday by the magistrates of the Termini Imerese prosecutor’s office.

UN denounces Taliban’s ban on women’s voices being heard in public

The Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public provide a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future, a top UN official warned Sunday.

Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the UN mission in the country, said the laws extend the “already intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers last Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.

The laws empower the Vice and Virtue Ministry to be at the front line of regulating personal conduct and administering punishments like warnings or arrest if its enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.

Venezuela Opposition candidate summoned by Attorney General

Summoned by the Attorney General, Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia said that the summons was being made “without guarantees of independence” of the judicial system, describing the public prosecutor as a “political accuser”.

“The Attorney General of the Republic has behaved several times as a political accuser: he condemns in advance and now he summons a subpoena without guarantees of independence of justice,” Urrutia – who claims victory in the presidential elections of July 28 – said in a video published on social networks.

He did not specify whether or not he will be present at the summons at the prosecutor’s office.

Mixed reactions to Telegram CEO arrest in France

RFK Jr., Elon Musk and more reacted to the news that Telegram messaging app CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France for speaking out in support of free speech on social media.

“The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent,” RFK Jr. wrote on X, reacting to the news, just days after he endorsed former President Trump.

Billionaire and Telegram messaging app CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris on Saturday night, according to TF1 TV and BFM TV. According to TF1, Durov was served an arrest warrant in relation to a preliminary police investigation.

The investigation regards his company’s messaging app, as French police believe there are not enough moderators to keep criminal activity in check, TF1 reported.

Musk, who also posted “#FreePavel” to social media following the reports, called out the arrest in multiple posts.

“Dangerous times,” he wrote, responding to another tweet that referred to similar instances, including in England.

Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski also spoke out about Durov’s arrest.

“France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech,” he wrote.

“They’re going after Telegram so they have a pretext to go after X and Elon next,” Joey Mannarino wrote. Others, including William Shatner, celebrated Durov’s arrest.

Telegram, which has over 900 million users, is a messaging app that is comparable to WhatsApp, but according to The New York Times, also allows large groups of people to communicate across different channels.

The New York Times also reported that the app was on “the radar of law enforcement agencies around the world because terrorist organisations, drug runners, weapons dealers and far-right extremist groups have used it for communicating, recruiting and organising.”

Photo: Property surveyors assess the damage to a residential building after Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones towards Israel, in northern Israel on 25 August. AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS