HALTING Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal, the far-right government said today.

This came before news broke that hundreds of handheld pagers exploded today, killing at least eight people, including members of militant group Hezbollah and wounding the Iranian ambassador, government and Hezbollah officials said.

Officials pointed the finger at Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated, remote attack that wounded more than 2,700 people at a time of rising tensions across the Lebanon border. The Israeli military declined to comment.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said at least eight people had been killed and 2,750 wounded, 200 of them critically.

If confirmed as an Israeli attack, this will significantly heighten tensions in the region.

The tit-for-tat rocket and artillery strikes by Israel and Hezbollah have displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanon border. Hezbollah has pledged to stop firing if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, but peace talks have repeatedly become bogged down.

Officials have repeatedly threatened heavier military action in Lebanon but know full well that this could easily ignite a wider conflict in the region.

There are unconfirmed reports that a recent Hezbollah missile attack killed a senior Israeli military official, piling pressure on the government to escalate its response.

After the security cabinet had met late into the night, a statement said that it had “updated the objectives of the war” to include safely returning the residents of the north to their homes.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has made several visits to Lebanon and Israel reportedly told Mr Netanyahu on Monday that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help return Israelis evacuated from the border area to their homes.

The same day, US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to the UN told the security council that many of the Israeli strikes on schools, humanitarian workers and civilians in Gaza in recent weeks, in which UN personnel and humanitarian workers were injured or killed, “were preventable.”

Numerous council members cited last week’s Israeli strike on a former school turned civilian shelter run by UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees. Six UNRWA workers were among at least 18 people killed, including women and children.

Israel claimed to have targeted a Hamas command-and-control centre in the compound.

Meanwhile, Israeli media continue to report that Mr Netanyahu is considering sacking Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with Gideon Saar, the leader of a small right-wing party who is seen as more hawkish.