Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi says the likelihood of war breaking out on the country's northern border with Lebanon has become "much higher", and warns Iran-backed Hezbollah militants that Israel has learnt "a lot of lessons" from its war with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
The war began after the Hamas attack on 7 October, which resulted in the death of around 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Since then, more than 24,400 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women and under-18s, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israel's bombardments and ground offensive, according to the Hamas government's Ministry of Health.