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.

Clashes continued on Friday between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, as tensions rose further after a strike on Tuesday killed Hamas's number two, Saleh al-Arouri, in a Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut.

Israeli warplanes struck the outskirts of the southern towns of Majdalzoun and Mhaibib and a region near a Lebanese army position in Aita al-Shaab, while shells hit the border towns of Houla, Tayr Harfa, al-Jebbayn, Rashaya al-Foukhar, Fardis, al-Bustan and Yarin.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna agreed to seek steps to avoid a wider Middle East war following strikes in Lebanon and Iran, the State Department said.

In a telephone call the day before, the two top diplomats "discussed the importance of measures to prevent the conflict in Gaza from expanding, including affirmative steps to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank and to avoid escalation in Lebanon and Iran," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.