Hezbollah rejects Lebanon ceasefire as Israeli strikes kill four

The Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has rejected a new ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, and Israel says it will not withdraw troops from the country.

The militant group demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon as fighting hampered efforts to end the Iran war.

Iran has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with Washington, and has suggested in recent days that it could intervene directly if Israel keeps up attacks there.

The Hezbollah announcement came as Israeli strikes killed at least four people, according to local authorities, and a UN peacekeeper was killed in the crossfire.

Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem, in a written statement read on TV, called the negotiations "absurd, humiliating and insulting".

He said the agreement's demand that Hezbollah fighters leave southern Lebanon under fire would mean "surrender, defeat and achieving the enemy's goals".

"What we are concerned about is an end to the aggression, ceasefire and Israel's withdrawal," he said.

"So long as our villages are not safe and are being bombed and destroyed and our people are killed," he said, northern Israel will not be safe."

Hezbollah had not been party to the negotiations. There was no immediate response from Israel or Lebanon. 

Trump says he thinks progress is being made on Lebanon

Following the Hezbollah rejection, US President Donald Trump said he believed progress was being ‌made between Israel and Lebanon and ‌that Lebanon deserved ‌to have peace.

Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that ‌he had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister ‌Benjamin Netanyahu and "I ‌actually spoke to Hezbollah ‌about it".

"And I ‌think progress is made. It's been going on for a long time, you know," he said.

Israel kept up strikes in southern Lebanon, and Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces would not be withdrawing from the area, which they invaded in March in parallel with the war in Iran.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which established Hezbollah in 1982, said Israel must, at a minimum, withdraw to positions it held before the war began.

Strikes continue despite US-arranged ceasefire

Along with Lebanon, residents of Gaza, northern Israel and Kuwait have all been under fire this week, despite US-arranged ceasefires that are supposedly in force.

Iranian and US forces traded attacks in the Gulf on Wednesday in one of the most intense bouts of fighting since early April, when a ceasefire halted large-scale hostilities.

Iranian forces struck Kuwait's airport, killing one person and injuring more than 60, authorities said, while the US military carried out strikes near the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump under pressure at home

The strait normally handles a fifth of the global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, but has been largely closed since the war began three months ago.

Iranian oil exports have fallen to their lowest level in six years, according to shipping data, but global oil prices fell by about three per cent on hopes that the ceasefire in Lebanon could help Washington and Iran find a diplomatic off-ramp from their war.

There has been little evidence of diplomatic progress, though Mr Trump has repeatedly declared since late March that a deal is close.

Mr Trump is under pressure at home to bring down fuel prices ahead of November's congressional elections, and he faced a rare rebuke on Wednesday, when the House of Representatives voted to block him from continuing the war.

The vote is largely symbolic, as Mr Trump is unlikely to sign it into law.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said yesterday that Iran's enemies had already been defeated on the battlefield and were now seeking to sow internal divisions.

Mr Khamenei has not been seen in public since he succeeded his father, who was killed in an air strike at the start of the war.

Tehran wants access to billions of dollars in oil revenue, waivers from sanctions on crude exports, a lifting of the US blockade on its ports, and leverage over the strait.

Mr Trump has said his top priority was to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran says its atomic program is for peaceful purposes.

The UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday that it found Iran's nuclear program to be largely unchanged despite three months of war.

Reuters/AP