Hezbollah rejects Lebanon ceasefire as Israeli strikes kill four

Hezbollah has rejected the latest ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon. (Reuters: Stringer)

Hezbollah has rejected the latest ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

The militia group demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, but Israel said it would not withdraw its troops.

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 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.

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".

Israeli forces would not be withdrawing troops from Lebanon, Israel says. (Reuters: Stringer)

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.

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.

Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire, according to a joint statement with the United States.

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.

Along with Lebanon, residents of Gaza