The British Embassy has delivered 60 tons of Land Rover spare parts and tyres to the Lebanese Army.

The British Ambassador to Lebanon Hamish Cowell oversaw the handover Wednesday at the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Logistics Base in Kfarshima.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Thursday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the government palace in Beirut.

Meloni is on a two-day visit to Lebanon during which she will meet some Lebanese officials and visit Italian peacekeepers based in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel.

A series of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon killed 16 people and a barrage of rockets fired by the militant group Hezbollah killed one Israeli man, making Wednesday the deadliest day in more than five months of fighting along the border.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, concerns have grown about further escalation along the Israel-Lebanon frontier. Tens of thousands of people on both sides have been displaced by the violence.

Jamaa Islamiya has a much lower profile than other militant groups in Lebanon, but the escalation of strikes over the border with Israel is pushing it into the spotlight.

Formed in the 1960s, Jamaa Islamiya claims to have carried out operations with Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and said seven affiliated rescuers were killed in an overnight Israeli strike.

Israeli airstrikes killed nine people in southern Lebanon late Wednesday, including paramedics who were preparing to respond to the first strike, the state-run National News Agency said.

That raises the number of people killed by Israeli strikes Wednesday to 16, after an overnight attack hit a different paramedic center linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group, killing seven of the group's members.

The Free Patriotic Movement on Wednesday called on Hezbollah to “do everything to spare civilians across Lebanon” the threat of “coming under Israeli bombardment,” a day after residents of the southern border town of Rmeish accused Hezbollah of trying to fire rockets at Israel from their town.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies are seeking to infiltrate Lebanon’s Jamaa Islamiya group, especially its Fajr Forces, in connection with “the close relation between the group and the Hamas Movement, and its improving relation with Hezbollah,” informed sources said.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, the British Embassy in Beirut launched its ‘Ambassador For A Day’ (AFAD) competition, now jointly with the Embassy of Canada to Lebanon. AFAD winners will get to shadow an Ambassador in Lebanon for one day, to see first-hand how girls can become leaders and advocates for change.

Each winner will be paired with an Ambassador or head of a U.N. Agency in Lebanon to spend a day with them and their team, and be invited as Guests of Honour to a ceremony hosted by the British and Canadian embassies. "This promises to be an unforgettable opportunity to build skills in diplomacy, confidence, and leadership," the British Embassy in Beirut said in a statement.

In parallel with the U.N. Security Council resolution that called for a Gaza ceasefire and amid the latest U.S.-Israeli disagreements, U.S. circles have warned of “very alarming Israeli intentions” and of “dangerous plans to turn a part of Lebanon into uninhabited areas as happened in the Gaza Strip," a media report said.

“Washington is dealing with these reports seriously in order to prevent an execution of the Israeli threats, after it worked over the past six months to prevent Lebanon being turned into an all-out war arena,” the sources said, according to al-Akhbar newspaper.

Hezbollah’s media relations department on Wednesday denied as “false and tendentious” the reports that said that Hezbollah fighters had tried to fire rockets at Israel from the southern border town of Rmeish.