Lebanon's health ministry said three people were killed Sunday in Israeli raids in the country's south, after Israel launched strikes against Hezbollah, which announced a wide-scale attack on Israel.

An "Israeli drone strike on a car in the village of Khiam" killed one person, the health ministry said in a statement.

Hezbollah said its chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will speak later Sunday after the Lebanese group announced it had launched a large-scale attack on Israel in response to Fouad Shukur's assassination, and Israeli forces struck Lebanon.

Nasrallah will speak at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT), addressing "the latest developments," a statement from the group said.

Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon early Sunday in what it said was a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah, as the group said it had launched hundreds of rockets and drones to avenge the killing of one of its top commanders last month.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked "thousands" of Hezbollah rocket launchers in south Lebanon that were aimed at northern and central Israel.

A war monitor said Israeli air strikes on Syria targeting positions of the army and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah killed three Iran-backed fighters on Friday.

U.S. Ambassador Lisa A. Johnson toured Friday the Berbara Fishermen Cooperative to view the newly renovated facility, which is now a vibrant destination that drives economic opportunity for the local community.

With support from the United States Government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Berbara Fishermen Cooperative recently upgraded their infrastructure with a pre-built kiosk and restroom (accessible to People with Disabilities – PWDs); bolstered their operations with a new wastewater treatment unit and kitchen equipment; and built local fishermen's’ expertise in food safety, operations, and management, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said.

In Lebanon's biggest public hospital, nurses are busy honing their life-saving skills as the specter of all-out war looms, 10 months into intensifying clashes between Hezbollah and Israel over the Gaza war.

"We are in a state of readying for war," nurse Basima Khashfi said as she gave emergency training to young nurses and other staff at the hospital in Beirut.

German airline giant Lufthansa said Friday it was extending a suspension of flights to Beirut until September 30 and to Tel Aviv and Tehran until September 2 with regional tensions still high.

Previously suspended services to Amman in Jordan and Erbil in Iraq will however resume on August 27, with flights to the latter crossing a "northern corridor" of Iraqi airspace.

The evaluation until now is that Washington “is not eager for the choice of a major war,” diplomatic sources in Beirut and New York said.

“The sources however ruled out a return to calm in Gaza and Lebanon prior to the U.S. presidential election,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday.

Israel “does not want things to descend into an all-out war with Hezbollah” out of fear of “its major repercussions in light of the multiple military, political and economic crises” that the war has created for Israel over the past 10 months, a media report said.

“Several Western and Arab diplomats will visit Lebanon in a bid to urge the Lebanese government to press Hezbollah not to retaliate against Israel” over the killing of its top military chief Fouad Shukur, al-Binaa newspaper reported on Friday.

After Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel’s army is shifting its attention from Gaza to the border with Lebanon, informed military sources told Lebanon’s al-Binaa newspaper that Israel has not sent any unusual reinforcements to Lebanon’s frontier.

The Israeli military leaders “are saying that focusing on the north stands for guaranteeing symmetric responses to the resistance’s strikes, without mentioning the notion of going to a grand or all-out war,” the daily added.