An Israeli drone struck Saturday a pickup truck deep in Lebanese territory, official media in Lebanon said, after weeks of skirmishes mainly limited to border areas since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) said "an enemy drone targeted a pickup truck" on a farmland in the Zahrani area on Lebanon's coast, some 45 kilometers from the Israeli border, without reporting any casualties. Media reports said the pickup was targeted in a banana grove and that the driver escaped unharmed.

The Israeli army said it was carrying out airstrikes on “a series of Hezbollah targets” on Friday evening in response to Hezbollah attacks earlier in the day.

“Three Israeli army soldiers were seriously wounded when an anti-tank missile was fired at a military post in the town of Manara,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on the X platform.

The United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon has said that the spillover of the Hamas-Israel war has already caused “significant damage” in Lebanon where Hezbollah and allied groups have been clashing with Israeli forces on the border for more than a month.

Imran Riza said in a statement Friday that there have been “concerning signs of escalating tensions” along the border.

A half-formed peace plan proposed by caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati may be Gaza’s best chance, according to the American Foreign Policy Magazine.

Mikati proposed a three-step peace plan, but his plan needs Western backers, Foreign Policy said.

There is an inclination to prevent the looming vacuum in the army chief post through a technical extension in Cabinet of General Joseph Aoun’s tenure, al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Friday.

Aoun’s term expires on January 10 and the session will be held prior to that, the daily added.

Former General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim said he played a role in a deal that allowed hundreds of foreign nationals and dozens of seriously injured Palestinians to leave Gaza after more than three weeks under siege.

Ibrahim told ad-Diyar newspaper, in remarks published Friday, that the lawyers of dual passport holders in Gaza had contacted him to help these dual nationals leave Gaza as Hamas asked in return for allowing wounded civilians to get hospitalized in Egypt.

Hezbollah said Friday that seven of its fighters have been killed, but didn't specify where they died other than to say that they were “martyred on the road to Jerusalem.”

A Hezbollah official and a Lebanese security official said the seven fighters were killed in neighboring Syria Friday morning. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The head of Hezbollah’s religious committee, Sheikh Mohammed Yazbek, has called for the election of a new Lebanese president.

“It’s about time the Lebanese met around a dialogue table to exit the lethal vacuum through electing a president and restoring regularity in state institutions,” Yazbek said.

The United States is not concerned over “the ongoing confrontations on the border in south Lebanon,” diplomatic sources said.

In remarks to the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper published Friday, the sources attributed the U.S. stance to “the presence of a ceiling governing these confrontations, which has resulted from the ongoing contacts between Washington and Tehran.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hosted Wednesday evening a secret meeting of the leaders of the pro-Tehran factions in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen, during which he stressed the need to close ranks and defended the strategy avoiding engagement in an all-out war, which has been “clearly endorsed” by Tehran and Hezbollah in dealing with the Gaza war, a source in Khamenei’s office said.

The source told Kuwait’s al-Jarida newspaper that Hezbollah was represented in the meeting by the head of its executive council, Sayyed Hashem Saffieddine.