BEIRUT: The Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli air strike on the south on Saturday killed 10 Syrians, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

The death toll from the strike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh is one of the heaviest since Hezbollah began exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces after the Gaza war erupted last October.

Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators have been trying to broker a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas, which diplomats say could help to avert a wider war in which Lebanon would be on the front line.

The dead in the latest strike included “a woman and her two children,” the health ministry said in a statement. A source close to Hezbollah in the Nabatieh area told AFP they were all civilians.

The Israeli military said the air force had struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility overnight “in the area of Nabatieh”, some 12 kilometres (seven and a half miles) from the Israeli border.

Hezbollah said it responded with a volley of Katyusha rockets on Ayelet HaShahar, a community in northern Israel.

The Israeli military said there were no reports of any casualties but the 55 rockets sparked “multiple fires”.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told British Foreign Minister David Lammy in a call there was a “need to pressure the Israeli enemy to stop its direct targeting of southern towns and villages”.