Some displaced residents of southern Lebanon returned Monday to their towns for a key Muslim holiday to pray and mourn loved ones killed in months of cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah.

"Today is Eid al-Adha, but it's completely different this year," said teacher Rabab Yazbek, 44, at a cemetery in the coastal town of Naqoura, from which many residents have fled.

Relative calm engulfed southern Lebanon on Sunday and Monday as Hezbollah appeared to have suspended its cross-border attacks against Israel for the Eid al-Adha holiday.

The fears that Israel “might expand the war in south Lebanon” have prompted U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein to plan an urgent visit to Tel Aviv and Beirut, a media report said.

Delegated by “the U.S. administration,” Hochstein will be on “an urgent mission aimed at containing the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah and keeping it under control,” Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted a Western diplomatic source as saying.

Two Lebanon-based United Nations officials have said that they are "deeply concerned" about the recent escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border.

"The danger of miscalculation leading to a sudden and wider conflict is very real," said U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and head of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Aroldo Lazaro.

Hezbollah kept up retaliatory attacks on Israel Saturday, days after a strike killed one of its top commanders, while a Palestinian group said one of its fighters was killed in south Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel which triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah on Saturday said it attacks Israel’s Meron air control base with guided missiles as part of its response to Israel’s assassination of senior military commander Taleb Abdallah.

In a statement, Hezbollah said the attack destroyed parts of the base’s equipment and radars.

Plumes of smoke were still billowing Friday over a south Lebanon village after a deadly Israeli strike as shopkeepers swept shattered glass and vowed to stay put despite soaring cross-border violence.

Jannata had been largely spared more than eight months of clashes between Hezbollah and Israel as war rages in Gaza, but the Lebanese village was shaken by an overnight strike that officials say killed two civilians.

Senior Israeli officials said that comments by the defense minister, who rejected a French initiative to contain tensions on the Lebanese border over "hostile policies against Israel," do not reflect the government's position.

A senior Hezbollah official said the group's intensified attacks along Israel’s northern border will make it difficult for Israel to stage an all-our war on Lebanon because it knows the conflict would be costly.

The attacks are also pressuring Israel to end the war in the Gaza Strip, said Sheikh Ali Daamoush in a sermon during Friday prayers. His comments came as Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed it fired rockets into northern Israel in a third day of barrages, saying it struck several military posts including two in the towns of Metula and Misgav Am.

The Syrian branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group is prepared to send more forces to Lebanon in case Israel launches a full-scale war against Hezbollah, an Islamic Jihad official said.

“All Palestinian youth look forward to facing the Israeli occupation and joining Hezbollah in this resistance,” said Ismail al-Sendawi, national relations officer for the Islamic Jihad in Syria. He spoke at a ceremony in Damascus commemorating members of the group from Syria who died fighting in Lebanon over the past eight months.