Asked about the latest airstrikes in Lebanon, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters in Las Vegas: “We have got to reach a cease-fire, both as it relates to what’s happening in Lebanon, and, of course, Gaza."

She added: "We are working around the clock in that regard, but we need these wars to end and we’ve got to definitely de-escalate what is happening in the region, and we’re working on that.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced hope Friday for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and preventing a broader conflict, as he backed efforts by the fragile Lebanese state to "assert itself" against Hezbollah.

Blinken again said that Israel, which has been carrying out deadly strikes on Lebanon, "has a right to defend itself" against Hezbollah, but voiced alarm over the humanitarian situation.

Israeli airstrikes on central Beirut on Thursday left two neighborhoods smoldering, killed 22 people and wounded dozens, Lebanon's health ministry said, as well as further escalating Israel's bloody conflict with Hezbollah.

The air raid on central Beirut — the deadliest in over a year of war — apparently targeted two residential buildings in separate neighborhoods simultaneously, according to an AP photographer at the scene. It brought down one apartment building and wiped out the lower floors of the other.

Lebanon’s crisis response unit announced Thursday that 28 people were killed and 113 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,169 killed and 10,212 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

The report also recorded 61 airstrikes and incidents of shelling in the past day, mostly concentrated in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the Bekaa Valley.

The International Organization for Migration’s regional director said Thursday that the “support provided so far is minimal” for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli aerial and ground offensive in Lebanon.

There is an “urgent need for help to identify safe places that are able to host people, because from our field visits, most of the places are overwhelmed,” Othman Belbeisi said during a visit to the country.

Amnesty International accused Israel on Thursday of "misleading" and sometimes inadequate calls for residents to evacuate parts of the country, expressing concern the warnings intend to massively uproot southerners.

Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.

Italy's defense minister Thursday said firing at the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and other incidents the force blames on Israel "could constitute war crimes".

"The hostile acts committed and repeated by Israeli forces against the base... could constitute war crimes," defense minister Guido Crosetto told a press conference, adding that Italy has asked for an official explanation "because it was not a mistake".

The Lebanese government said it was mulling establishing at least two pre-fabricated "villages" to help shelter some of the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by intense Israeli bombing.

Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who heads the government's disaster management unit, said a "working paper" outlined options for shelters, including "setting up ready-made homes on some open, public land".

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Thursday two of its members were wounded when its positions came under fire in the country’s south, where Israel and Hezbollah are fighting.

Esmail Qaani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, is alive and unhurt but under guard and being questioned as Iran investigates major security breaches, multiple sources have told the Middle East Eye news portal.