The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrated Thursday at Notre Dame University-Louaize the impact of its Community Support Program (CSP), which has provided local development assistance to more than 746,000 people across 180 communities in Lebanon over six years (2018-2024).

"This support comes as local municipalities and communities are bearing a particularly heavy toll in trying to provide much-needed public services like water and household electricity against the backdrop of Lebanon’s deepening economic crisis," USAID said in a statement.

The Biden administration has grown “extremely concerned” that escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah in recent days might deteriorate into an all-out war and is scrambling to prevent it, U.S. news portal Axios quoted U.S. officials as saying.

“The U.S. is concerned about Israel rushing into a war with Hezbollah — or getting dragged into one — without a clear strategy or consideration of the full implications of a wider conflict,” the officials said.

Hezbollah launched rocket and drone attacks on several Israeli army bases and positions on Thursday, after an Israeli strike killed one of its senior commanders.

Hezbollah fighters launched "an attack with rockets and drones, targeting six barracks and military sites" while simultaneously flying "squadrons of explosive-laden drones" at three other Israeli bases, the group said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has renewed calls for a diplomatic solution between Israel and Lebanon and said a Gaza ceasefire deal would have a major effect lowering tensions.

"What I've heard from everyone concerned," Blinken told reporters in Doha Wednesday, "is there's a strong preference for a diplomatic solution."

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea hit out anew Wednesday at Speaker Nabih Berri over the presidential crisis.

“Mr. Speaker Berri, we are pleased that you are not afraid of threats, and accordingly, since you are not afraid of threats nor of anything, you can call for a serious presidential election session with successive rounds so that we elect a president and relieve the Lebanese, at least in this file,” Geagea said in a post on the X platform.

Britain-based Middle East specialist Amal Saad on Wednesday played down the prospect of wider escalation between Hezbollah and Israel following the latter’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon a day earlier.

"I don't think that the death of this highest-ranking commander is going to change any of Hezbollah's calculations," Saad said, explaining that civilian casualties were "red lines" for the group rather than the targeting of commanders or fighters.

A top Hezbollah official vowed Wednesday that the group would step up its attacks on Israel, after an Israeli drone strike killed a senior commander in south Lebanon the day before.

"We will increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks," the head of Hezbollah's executive council, Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, said, speaking at Abdallah's funeral in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has communicated with Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil over the past two days, through the official channel between them, asking the FPM leader to support his nomination for the presidency, a media report said.

Geagea’s messages included an “acknowledgement” that it would be “difficult” to see him elected president, but he asked Bassil to back him “under the excuse of blocking (the election of Suleiman) Franjieh,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Wednesday.

For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and in the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way.

They're taking a smugglers' route home across remote mountainous terrain, on motorcycle or on foot, then traveling by car on a risky drive through government-held territory into opposition-held northwestern Syria, avoiding checkpoints or bribing their way through.

After the roar of Israeli warplanes terrified her baby grandson, Umm Hassan's family sought solace on a south Lebanon beach, hoping to escape the escalating cross-border violence.

Life goes on but "the children are frightened," the 60-year-old told AFP from the beach in Tyre, about 20 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon frontier.