The European Union's foreign policy chief met Hezbollah's top lawmaker Mohammed Raad in Beirut on Saturday, as part of a push to avoid Lebanon being dragged into the Israel-Hamas war.

An EU source confirmed the meeting, which came hours after Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at an Israeli military base in response to the killing of a senior Hamas figure in an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs on Tuesday.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire in one of the heaviest days of cross-border fighting in recent weeks, a day after Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged retaliation for Israel's killing of a top Hamas leader in the suburbs of Lebanon's capital.

Nasrallah said that if his group didn't strike back for the killing Tuesday of Saleh Arouri, Hamas' deputy political leader, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel on Saturday, warning that the barrage was its initial response to Israel's assassination of a top leader from the allied Hamas group in the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs earlier this week.

The rocket attack came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that his group must retaliate for the killing of Saleh Arouri, the deputy political leader of Hamas in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut. Nasrallah said that if Hezbollah did not strike back, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attack. He appeared to be making his case for a response to the Lebanese public, even at the risk of escalating the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday stressed that his group’s response to Israel’s airstrike that killed Hamas deputy head Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahieh) “will undoubtedly come.”

The Palestinian resistance has lost only 10% of its capabilities since the outbreak of fighting, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said.

In an interview with Egypt-based weekly political magazine Rose al-Yūsuf, Berri said that the Israeli army will not achieve its goal to eliminate Hamas.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will travel to Israel Sunday for her fourth visit since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, a ministry spokesman said.

Baerbock will hold talks with Israel's new Foreign Minister Israel Katz, as well as President Isaac Herzog, foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a regular press conference on Friday.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein is discussing with Israeli officials means to avoid escalation on the Lebanese front and “the conditions that can guarantee the return of calm to the border with Lebanon,” a media report said.

More than 76,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon in almost three months of near-daily fighting along the border with Israel, the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration has said.

The border area has seen a surge of violence since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in early October, with tit-for-tat exchanges of fire continuing on Friday between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati met Friday with head of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia, His Holiness Catholicos Aram I, in Antelias.

Mikati and Aram I discussed issues and challenges facing Lebanon, particularly the situation in the South of Lebanon, the presidential election, and the socio-economic crisis facing the country, the Armenian Church Catholicosate of Cilicia said.

EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, will arrive Friday in Lebanon on a three-day visit.

Borrell will meet with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib and Lebanese Army Commander General Joseph Aoun.