Lebanese state media said an Israeli drone strike on Thursday targeted a car on a key road linking the capital Beirut with the Bekaa plain and eastern neighbor Syria.

"An enemy drone targeted a car in Araya," the National News Agency said, adding the road had been cut off by the strike that comes after two cars were targets on the same route last week, including a van loaded with Hezbollah ammunition.

Health Minister Firass Abiad told AFP on Wednesday more than 2,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel launched intense air strikes on Lebanon more than a month ago.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired about 120 projectiles across the border from Lebanon on Wednesday, as an AFP journalist reported hearing interceptions over commercial hub Tel Aviv.

Lebanon's health ministry said 40 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country's east including the main city of Baalbek Wednesday, with rescuers still looking for survivors under the rubble.

"The series of Israeli enemy strikes on the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek" killed "40 people and injured 53", the ministry said in a statement giving a preliminary toll.

Hezbollah claimed a slew of attacks on Wednesday, including two that targeted naval bases near the Israeli city of Haifa and two near Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah fighters "targeted the Stella Maris naval base northwest of Haifa with a salvo of high-quality missiles and a squadron of attack drones," the group said in a statement.

Israel conducted air strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs overnight Thursday, with one raid hitting an area near Lebanon's only international airport.

The pre-dawn raids came after Hezbollah claimed a slew of attacks on Israel, including a missile strike targeting a military base near Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport.

Strikes hit south Beirut on Wednesday about an hour after Israel issued evacuation warnings for three areas of the main Hezbollah bastion, AFPTV footage showed.

One of the strikes triggered a loud explosion which was heard across much of the capital, witnesses said.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qasem said Wednesday his group has tens of thousands of combatants ready to fight Israel, in a speech marking 40 days since his predecessor Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike.

"We have tens of thousands of trained resistance combatants" ready to fight, he said, adding that nowhere in Israel was "off-limits" to the group’s attacks.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has marked 40 days since Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah by publishing a eulogy and political statement in al-Akhbar newspaper.

The caretaker Cabinet on Wednesday approved granting the Defense Ministry a treasury loan to recruit 1,500 soldiers for the Lebanese Army.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati had announced at the Oct. 24 Paris conference that his government had decided to recruit more troops and could deploy 8,000 soldiers in the south as part of a plan to implement a ceasefire and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.