U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Thursday that he spoke Wednesday with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant to “review regional security developments and reiterate unwavering U.S. support for Israel in the face of threats from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iran’s other regional partners.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has held phone talks with Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati over the deadly explosions that rocked Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who was injured in the exploding device attacks this week, has been transferred to Tehran, the Iranian Embassy said Thursday.

Ambassador Mojtaba Amani's general health is “very good," the embassy said in a statement. Amani along with some 90 injured Lebanese citizens were transferred to Tehran on Wednesday night, it added.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday called for a de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, as Lebanon said 37 people had now been killed by booby-trapped hand-held devices.

"Today the risk of escalation is once more increasing in a dangerous way" in Lebanon, said Sanchez, at a news conference with visiting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that civilian objects should not be weaponized, in the wake of a deadly wave of explosions across Lebanon targeting pagers used by Hezbollah.

"I think it's very important that there is an effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponize civilian objects -- that should be a rule that... governments should, be able to implement," Guterres said Wednesday at a briefing at U.N. headquarters.

Doctors in Lebanon spoke of horrific eye injuries and finger amputations, a day after Hezbollah paging devices exploded across the country, killing 12 people and wounding up to 2,800.

"The injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes -- some people lost their sight," said doctor Joelle Khadra, who was working in emergency at Beirut's Hotel-Dieu hospital.

The simultaneous explosion of hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members has massively hindered the group's communications and could undermine its operations against Israel in Lebanon's south, analysts said.

The wireless devices used by Hezbollah combatants, health workers and administrative staff exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday killing 12 people and wounding around 2,800, according to official figures.

Bulgarian authorities rejected claims that exploding devices have been shipped through the territory of the Balkan country.

“No customs operations with communication equipment (pagers) have been carried out through the territory of Bulgaria,” the state agency for national security said in a statement on Thursday.

With Israel's defense minister announcing a "new phase" of the war and an apparent Israeli attack setting off explosions in electronic devices in Lebanon, the specter of all-out combat between Israel and Hezbollah seems closer than ever before.

Hopes for a diplomatic solution to the conflict appear to be fading quickly as Israel signals a desire to change the status quo in its north, where it has exchanged cross-border fire with Hezbollah since the Lebanese group began attacking on Oct. 8, a day after the war's opening salvo by Hamas.

Caretaker Prime Minister called Thursday for the United Nations to oppose Israel's "technological war" on his country ahead of a Security Council meeting on exploding devices used by Hezbollah that killed 32 people.

Najib Mikati said in a statement the U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday should "take a firm stance to stop the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and the technological war it is waging".