Lebanon has rescued more than 50 people, mostly Syrians, from a sinking migrant boat off the country's north coast, the army said .

The military obtained "information about a vessel that was sinking off the coast of Tripoli while it was being used for illegal people smuggling", the army said in a statement.

France's Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Monday urged restraint in meetings with senior officials in Beirut, seeking to de-escalate tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border amid near-daily exchanges of fire.

Since October 8, the day after the Israel-Hamas conflict started, the frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating cross-border fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which says it is acting in support of Palestinian armed group Hamas.

A new round of cross-border clashes erupted Sunday between the Israeli army and Hezbollah.

In separate statements, Hezbollah said it attacked the Birkat Risha and Hanita Israeli posts inflicting “certain casualties.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said on Sunday that France could play a key role in preventing a war in Lebanon as cross-border skirmishes with Hezbollah continue to raise tensions.

"France could play a positive and significant role to prevent a war in Lebanon," Cohen said at a joint media briefing with visiting French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.

An Israeli drone on Saturday bombed a deserted room in a residential neighborhood in the Nabatieh district town of Houmine al-Tahta, which lies around 40 kilometers away from the nearest border point, in a significant escalation of hostilities, the National News Agency said.

The strike did not cause any casualties according to the town's mayor.

Hezbollah said Saturday that it mounted two morning attacks on the Birkat Risha Israeli post near the border, inflicting deaths and injuries.

Media reports said four Israeli soldiers were wounded in the attacks, one of them critically.

A Dec. 21 visit that French President Emmanuel Macron had been scheduled to make to Lebanon has been called off, French diplomatic sources told the Saudi Okaz newspaper.

The visit has been canceled for reasons that are still unknown and officials in Lebanon have been informed of this, the sources added.

Israel's military has repeatedly attacked the Lebanese Army near the border over the past two months, prompting alarm in the Biden administration and sharp rebukes from top U.S. officials to Israeli leadership, CNN has reported.

"The Israelis have struck Lebanese Armed Forces positions more than 34 times since October 7, including with small arms and artillery fire, drones and helicopters," according to U.S. officials, a regional security source, and a list of the incidents compiled by the U.S. and reviewed by CNN.

German airline group Lufthansa resumed its flights to and from Beirut on Friday after they were suspended on October 13 as tensions on Lebanon's border with Israel soared and the war in Gaza raged.

Lufthansa's subsidiaries SWISS and Eurowings also resumed their flights, the group said.

Lebanese lawmakers on Friday extended the army chief's mandate, averting a military power vacuum as the country faces spillover of the Israel-Hamas war without a president or a fully functioning government.

Parliament approved delaying the retirement of senior officers at the head of the military and security services for one year, Lebanon's official National News Agency said.