Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati made a surprise visit Tuesday to restive south Lebanon, whose border area has been witnessing deadly clashes between Israel and Hezbollah for the past 16 days amid Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We came to our dear South -- which is paying the price of its defense of the entire country in the face of a usurper and merciless entity -- to stress Lebanon’s respect for the international legitimacy resolutions and commitment to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” Mikati said during the visit.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil met Tuesday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain el-Tineh as part of a tour over the military developments in south Lebanon and Gaza.

"It's time for accord, not for confrontation," Bassil said after the meeting, as he called for a swift election of a president.

Cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have been gaining pace. But does the powerful Lebanese movement really seek to enter open conflict with Israel?

Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea said Monday that Washington and “the Lebanese people” reject “the threats of some to drag Lebanon into a new war,” in an apparent reference to Hezbollah’s attacks against Israeli forces on Lebanon’s border.

”We are … here to say unequivocally that our commitment to the Lebanese people is so much stronger than any cowardly act of violence or terrorism,” Shea said at a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, in which a suicide bomber killed 241 U.S. servicemembers.

More than 19,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid an uptick in tensions between Israel and Hezbollah at the country's southern border, figures released Monday by a United Nations agency showed.

"An increase in cross-border incidents" has resulted in the displacement of 19,646 people in Lebanon, "both within the south and elsewhere within the country", said the International Organization for Migration.

The Israeli army shelled Monday the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Rmeish, after it claimed having intercepted 2 drones that entered from Lebanon.

Soon afterwards, two anti-tank missiles were fired at an Israeli post in the Galilee, triggering alert sirens in Kiryat Shmona on the border with Lebanon. Israeli media reported three injuries. The Israeli army also said al-Marj military post, which faces the Lebanese town of Markaba, was attacked.

Lebanon will face “very dangerous consequences” should attacks continue against Israel from Lebanese territory, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Lebanon has the right to defend itself against Israel, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Monday, a few minutes after the Lebanese Red Cross said it has transferred a dead body from the Arqoub region, rising the death toll in Lebanon to 33.

The Red Cross transferred four injured fighters and one dead body from the border town of Kfarhamam in the Arqoub region to the Marjaayoun Governmental Hospital.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil met Monday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the Grand Serail as part of a tour over the military developments in south Lebanon and Gaza.

The Hezbollah-linked Resistance Brigades, also known as Saraya al-Moqawama, announced Monday the death of two of its members "as they performed their national duties."

The Resistance Brigades was created in 1997 by Hezbollah's leadership. The group comprised Lebanese young men from various sects who wanted to fight the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon without having to officially join Hezbollah. The group was not disbanded after Israel's withdrawal from the South in 2000.