Hezbollah militants targeted Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese border village of Labbouneh with artillery shells and rockets on Wednesday, the group said, a day after Israel said it had killed two successors to Hezbollah’s slain leader.

The Iran-backed group, which has been launching rockets against Israel for a year in parallel with the Gaza war and is now fighting it in ground clashes, said it had pushed the troops back.

The escalation in Lebanon and the ongoing one-year-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has raised fears of a wider West Asia conflict that could suck in Iran and Israel’s superpower ally the US.

The Israeli military said three of its troops were severely injured on Tuesday and Wednesday during combat in southern Lebanon. Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Wednesday morning after Israel renewed bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, overnight.

The conflict in Lebanon has escalated dramatically in recent weeks as Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon that expanded further this week.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to say how many troops were in Lebanon but the military has announced four divisions are operating on the border, meaning that thousands of soldiers are deployed.

Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and said it had killed a figure responsible for budgeting and logistics, Suhail Hussein Husseini.

The suburbs, once a densely-populated and thriving district, has been emptied of many of its residents by Israeli evacuation warnings. Many Lebanese draw parallels between the warnings and those seen in Gaza over the last year, prompting fears that Beirut could face the same scale of destruction.

US President Joe Biden is expected to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a person familiar with the matter, with talks set to include discussion of any plans to strike Iran.

West Asia has been on edge awaiting Israel’s response to a missile attack from Iran last week that Tehran carried out in retaliation for Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon. The Iranian attack ultimately killed no one in Israel and Washington called it ineffective. Israel’s retaliation will be a key subject of the call.