U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein held “extraordinary” direct and indirect contacts with all parties in the region in the wake of Monday’s major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, diplomatic sources said.

The latest Israeli escalation “has not changed Hezbollah’s stance” that “rules out an all-out Israeli war on Lebanon,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.

Hezbollah has rejected the French paper that was sent by the French embassy in Beirut to caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib last Wednesday, a media report said.

UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Aroldo Lázaro on Tuesday sounded the alarm that over the past days there has been “a concerning shift in the exchanges of fire” between Israel and Hezbollah.

“This conflict has already claimed too many lives and caused significant damage to houses and public infrastructure. It has jeopardized the livelihoods and changed the life of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Blue Line. Yet we now see an expansion and intensification of strikes,” Lázaro said in a statement distributed by UNIFIL.

Days ago, Tala Assaad could hear Israeli strikes near south Lebanon's coastal city of Sidon. Now, she's having lunch at a packed ski resort, eager to disconnect from news of war.

This winter, more well-heeled Lebanese have been hitting the slopes north of Beirut as Lebanon's Hezbollah and arch-foe Israel exchange near-daily fire in the country's south, amid fears of all-out conflict as the Gaza war rages.

Israeli warplanes struck Tuesday southern towns deep inside Lebanon, including a town near Sidon, almost 30 kilometers from the nearest Israeli boundary.

The series of airstrikes came shortly after Hezbollah launched a salvo of rockets at the Israeli Meron air control base in retaliation for deadly Israeli strikes on east Lebanon.

Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem has warned that the group has much more weapons to use if Israel expands the war.

"If the Israelis go too far, we will retaliate more. All what we have used until now in the fighting is the minimum of what we own," he said in a speech Monday in an apparent reference to Hezbollah's huge arsenal including precision-guided missiles and explosive drones.

Hezbollah said it launched a salvo of rockets at an Israeli air control base on Tuesday in retaliation for deadly Israeli strikes on east Lebanon.

Hamas ally Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since the Gaza war erupted in October, but strikes have been largely restricted to the border area.

Hezbollah fired on Monday a volley of rockets from Lebanon at an Israeli military base in Syria's occupied Golan Heights, in response to Israel's deadly airstrikes in Lebanon's Baalbek.

Two Hezbollah members were killed in the Israeli strikes in the eastern Baalbek area, two security officials in Lebanon and a source close to Hezbollah told AFP.

During a funeral procession for a Hezbollah fighter on Monday, one of the group's lawmakers, Hassan Fadlallah, lambasted the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon’s eastern district of Baalbek, a Hezbollah bastion near the border with Syria.