Israel carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon, killing at least six people, including three paramedics working at a health centre, just hours after its envoys had agreed with the Lebanese government to extend a ceasefire.

Israel also said it had killed the Hamas military chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, in a targeted strike in Gaza on Friday.

Al-Haddad was described by Israel’s army as one of the senior Hamas military commanders who directed the planning and execution of the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw more than 250 taken hostage. A Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, confirmed the killing on social media.

In a further sign that the region could be on the brink of a possible return to full-scale war, reports in the US and Israeli press said Donald Trump had been briefed on his military options in Iran, should he decide to break a five-week-old truce and resume strikes in the hope of forcing concessions at the negotiating table.

Lebanon’s state-run media reported that at least five villages in the south of the country had been hit by strikes, and the Israeli military confirmed on Saturday that it was targeting what it said was “Hezbollah infrastructure” in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese authorities said that an airstrike on Friday had hit a clinic run by the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Committee, killing six people, three of them paramedics. An Israeli military statement said it had killed Hezbollah militants preparing to fire rockets at its troops in southern Lebanon.

Al-Haddad’s family confirmed his death in Friday’s strike to the Associated Press. Six other people, including his wife and daughter, were also killed, according to reports. His two sons were killed earlier in the war.

His body was wrapped in Hamas and Palestinian flags as it was carried by mourners at Saturday’s funeral in Gaza City.

Al-Haddad joined Hamas when it was established in the 1980s, and was a member of the Qassam Brigades’ Majd section tasked to go after collaborators with Israel. He was also a member of Hamas’ Military Council, the highest group of commanders that played a key role in the attacks that sparked the war.

Israel’s army chief of staff called his killing a significant operation, and said that Israel would continue pursuing its enemies to hold them accountable.

The new strikes, which triggered a fresh exodus of civilians from the south, came hours after envoys from Israel and Lebanon completed a round of talks in Washington, with an agreement to extend a month-long partly observed ceasefire for a further 45 days, and to establish a US-supervised security mechanism between their armies.

Hezbollah, however, has denounced the talks, while Israel has only partly observed the ceasefire ordered by Trump on 17 April, restricting attacks on Beirut and northern Lebanon in general while focusing its military operations in the south, where its troops have clashed with Hezbollah fighters.

Israel has also kept up operations in Gaza against Hamas, confirming on Saturday that it had killed Haddad, the latest acting Hamas military chief to die in Gaza, and the last surviving Hamas senior official suspected of planning the attack on southern Israel in October 2023, which killed 1,200 people and ignited the latest Gaza war.

Israel has accused Hamas of violating the fragile eight-month-old ceasefire in Gaza by refusing to disarm. For its part, Hamas has blamed Israel for failing to abide by the first phase of the truce, continuing airstrikes and stealthily moving the agreed demarcation line between the two forces westwards into Hamas-controlled parts of Gaza.

In recent days, the Israeli media has been predicting a return to full-scale war across the region, as truces fray amid scant diplomatic progress. As Trump returned to the US from a visit to China on Friday, the New York Times reported that he had been briefed on US options for returning to the offensive in Iran, but that he had yet to make a decision.

Pakistani-led mediation has failed to bring diplomatic progress in more than a month since Islamabad brokered a ceasefire in the Iran war, with the negotiating positions of the US and Iran still far apart.

With Associated Press

The leaderboard was spinning like a tombola at Aronimink on Saturday, where at one point or another just about every player in the field had a birdie putt to take a share of the lead and then a bogey putt to let go of it again. When the drum finally stopped turning, Alex Smalley, a 29-year-old from North Carolina who has never won a professional golf tournament, was top of the leaderboard on six under, two shots clear of a five-way tie for second. No disrespect to Smalley, the world No 78, but the field are queued up like bowling balls on the rack waiting to take a run at him on Sunday.

Philadelphia loves an underdog, but it’s probably best if the trumpeter waits another day before he strikes up the opening notes of the Rocky theme.

There are 21 players within four shots of a share of first, and eight major champions among them. Jon Rahm, who has finally rediscovered his major touch, is in the group closest behind him on four under, and Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Reed are all only one further back than that. It doesn’t stop there. Justin Rose, Martin Kaymer, Cameron Smith and Hideki Matsuyama are grouped on two under. Even Scottie Scheffler, whose stone-cold putter cost him a handful of birdies, may still fancy his chances from five shots off Smalley’s lead.

It is the most congested major leaderboard anyone can remember. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Scheffler said, “I’ve never seen a leaderboard this bunched up. It’s quite literally anybody’s tournament.”

Smalley was playing in the final pair, along with Maverick McNealy, and until he pulled clear by making a birdie on the par-five 16th, he was part of a six-way tie for first place. It would have broken the record going into the final day in a major, beating the five-way tie at the Open at St Andrews back in 1933. Instead Smalley’s out in his own. It is the first time in his life he’s had the 54-hole lead in a professional tournament. “I don’t like being in the spotlight a whole lot,” he said on Friday night. “I’m still trying to get used to playing in front of large groups of people like there are at tournaments like this one.”

He seems to be catching up with it. He played a hell of a round on Saturday. He looked all but out of it after he scored four bogeys in his first eight holes, but then he went and played the next 10 in five under.

As well as Åberg and Rahm, the group of five immediately behind him included England’s Aaron Rai, who managed to hold on to his score at five-under through the late afternoon until he made a dreadful mess of the 18th, when he veered from the rough on the left to a bunker on the right. It’s been over 100 years since an Englishman won this tournament, and Rai, 31, has a shot at breaking one of the longest jinxes in major golf. But it’s awful busy up there at the top. By mid-afternoon it had got so bunched up there that a lot of the players admitted they had given up looking at the leaderboards.

“It’s so bunched it was kind of pointless,” said Canada’s Nick Taylor, also on four under, and besides, the greens here are so mean you couldn’t afford to take your eyes off them long enough to take it in.

So a tournament that has been widely criticised by the players for being so damn difficult may yet end in one of the more extraordinary Sundays in major history. It helped that the sun was out and the wind had shifted so that some of the greens on the shorter par-fours were reachable off the tee, but it was true, too, that after all the criticism they received from McIlroy and Scheffler about the fiendishly difficult pin positions on the first two days, the tournament committee were a little more generous with their set-up.

On Friday, Scheffler had described the pins as “absurd”, and McIlroy had said they were “not great”. After scoring 66, the Northern Irishman explained that he was just venting his pent-up irritation.

“When you have a set of greens like this, you can start to frustrate people pretty easily,” McIlroy said. “You heard it in me last night, you heard it in Scottie. There was a lot of guys that were frustrated yesterday coming off the course. But at the same time, it creates a hell of an entertaining championship. If I wasn’t playing this tournament, I’d love what’s going on this week, but watching and playing are two different things.”

He was in a better mood on Saturday. “No profanity today,” McIlroy said as he walked in to talk to the press. Two days on from his “shit” performance in the opening round, when he made four back-to-back bogeys and was tied for 105th, McIlroy’s right back in contention. “I’ve climbed my way out of that hole and I’m proud of myself for doing that,” McIlroy said. “There’s one more day left, and I feel like I’m close enough to the lead that I’ve still got a good chance.” Him, and just about everyone else holding a club.

“It is,” Schauffele said, “going to be an absolute free-for-all”.