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By Laila Bassam, Pesha Magid and Steve Holland
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) - Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have agreed to a ceasefire beginning at 4 p.m. local time on Friday (1300 GMT), a senior U.S. official told Reuters, after hostilities between them had escalated sharply overnight in Lebanon.
"Hezbollah and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire," the official said, adding that negotiators for the U.S. and Qataris worked out the deal with help from Iran.
“We understand that after the exchange of fire earlier today, Israel and Hezbollah are now in a ceasefire.”
The intensification of violence in Lebanon strained the U.S.-Iranian interim agreement signed on Wednesday to end the wider war in the Middle East.
A Hezbollah lawmaker earlier told Reuters that Iran had informed the group that talks with Washington could not continue without the implementation of a comprehensive ceasefire.
Overnight, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 18 people in Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry reported, while four Israeli soldiers were killed in south Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks by Hezbollah during this war.
The Iran deal requires the United States, Iran, and their allies to declare an immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. Violence abated significantly earlier this week, but has since picked up.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Eman Abouhassira in Dubai, Maya Gebeily and Nazih Osseiran in Beirut; Writing by Jana Choukeir and Tom Perry; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Aidan Lewis and Alison Williams)
