Hezbollah has provided a glimpse of its secret tunnels housing weapons -- a move experts say is a warning to Israel as the underground facilities could prove vital to the group should wider war erupt.

The Iran-backed movement has exchanged regular fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.

An Algerian oil tanker set sail Thursday for power-hungry Lebanon, official media said, with 30,000 tons of fuel destined to restart turbines in the country grappling with years of economic meltdown.

MP Marwan Hamadeh sparked panic on Wednesday by saying that an Israel-Hezbollah war would erupt within days or even “hours,” citing diplomats informed on the negotiations in the region.

A few hours later, Hamadeh appeared to downplay his own remarks, telling al-Jadeed television that his statement was “blown out of proportion” and that he based his analysis on “alarming developments on the ground that took place over the past 48 hours.”

Former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim has ruled out an “all-out war,” despite the soaring tensions in Lebanon and the region following Israel’s assassination of Fouad Shukur in Beirut and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

“Any potential escalation in Lebanon will be controlled,” Ibrahim said.

There is “neither real information nor serious indications that a broad war will erupt in the region, contrary to what was widely circulated on Wednesday,” al-Joumhouria newspaper quoted a “credible” senior Lebanese leader as saying.

“There is exaggerated intimidation aimed at pressuring Hezbollah to deter it from responding to the assassination of its military chief Fouad Shukur in Beirut’s southern suburbs,” the top leader told the daily in remarks published Thursday.

China on Thursday urged its citizens in Lebanon to leave "as soon as possible", according to an embassy statement, the day after an Israeli strike in the country killed a senior Palestinian militant.

"Recently, the situation on the Lebanese-Israeli border has continued to be tense, and security circumstances in Lebanon are severe and complex," China's embassy in Beirut said.

Israeli warplanes waged overnight into Thursday a series of strikes on more than ten southern border towns and a town near Sarafand.

The Israeli army said it hit Hezbollah targets there, including weapons depots, military buildings and a launchpad.

An Israeli strike in the southern coastal city of Sidon killed a Fatah official on Wednesday, a senior member of the Palestinian group and a security source said.

It marked the first such reported attack on Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.

Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad has rejected that Électricité du Liban chairman Kamal Hayek be held responsible for the latest blackout in the country, after caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati referred the file to the judiciary.

"I was surprised with what happened … I wasn’t expecting this injustice represented in the measure taken by Mikati and he has no right to pin the blame on a single party,” Fayyad said in an interview with MTV.

An Israeli drone targeted Wednesday a car in the city of Sidon near the Ain el-Helweh camp, hours after another drone strike on a car in the southern town of Beit Leef killed a Hezbollah fighter.

In response to the Beit Leef strike, Hezbollah targeted the Hadb Yaroun post in northern Israel with a suicide drone and the Ramim barracks with Katyusha rockets.