A senior Israeli political official has commented on the situation on Israel’s northern border by warning that "if Hezbollah continues to attack Israel, the whole of southern Lebanon will look like Gaza."

"Beirut will not be immune," the official added, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

As rocket fire from Lebanon streaked over the northern Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona Wednesday, the settlement’s remaining inhabitants said life there was growing intolerable after eight months of near-daily fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Booms rang out overhead and residents ran for safety. Cars lining the streets bore cracked windshields from past attacks and windows were blown out.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has responded to unusual remarks by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who has hinted that Cyprus would be targeted if it allowed Israel to use its air bases to attack Lebanon in the event of war.

Christodoulides said his island nation “is in no way involved” in any military operations in the region, adding that Nasrallah’s remarks “don’t in any way reflect what’s being attempted, which is to present a picture that Cyprus is involved in military operations.”

Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, has visited Israeli air defense soldiers near the border with Lebanon, saying Israel was aware of Hezbollah's capabilities demonstrated in a video released by the group and has solutions for such threats.

“We of course have infinitely greater capabilities," he said.

An escalating cross-border tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah raised fears Wednesday of a full-blown war, but experts are divided on the prospect of a wider conflict.

The United States was working behind the scenes to ease tensions, a day after Israel's top diplomat warned the Iran-backed Hezbollah that it would be destroyed in the event of a "total war" and the Israeli army said its operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been signed off.

A German court has canceled an arrest warrant against former Lebanese central bank chief Riad Salameh because he can no longer use the post to suppress evidence, prosecutors said Wednesday.

After an appeal by Salameh, a Munich court has "canceled the arrest warrant because the suspect... no longer holds the office of Governor of the Lebanese central bank," a spokeswoman for the Munich public prosecutor's office told AFP.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday threatened the nearby island of Cyprus if it opened its airports and bases to Israel in the event of total war with Hezbollah.

"Opening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon would mean that the Cypriot government is part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war," Nasrallah warned in a televised address commemorating slain Hezbollah commander Taleb Abdallah.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s visit to Lebanon on Tuesday was “less diplomatic” than the previous ones and his remarks carried a stronger warning, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Al-Joumhouria newspaper for its part said Hochstein stressed the need to “lower the escalation and the tensions in the south pending the results of the negotiations over Gaza,” conveying “several signals that the negotiations will be finalized soon.”

The New Jersey man accused of repeatedly stabbing author Salman Rushdie is not interested in an offered plea deal that would shorten his time in state prison but expose him to federal prison on a separate terrorism-related charge, his lawyer said.

Hadi Matar, 26, sat silently in Chautauqua County Court as lawyers outlined a proposal they said was worked out between state and federal prosecutors and agreed to by Rushdie over the past several months.

Hezbollah attacked Wednesday a command center in Kiryat Shmona and Israeli soldiers' posts in Metula, in response to Israeli strikes on south Lebanon.

The group said it attacked with suicide drones Israeli soldiers in Metula as Israeli warplanes raided the southern towns of Yaroun, Borghlieh and al-Khiam.