Human Rights Watch has warned that Syrians fleeing Israel's onslaught on Lebanon could face repression at home as more than 355,000 Syrians returned in more than a month of war.

"Syrians escaping Lebanon, particularly men, risk arbitrary detention and abuse by Syrian authorities," the group said in a statement.

For weeks, Fatima Zayyoun has tended to her daughter Ivana, whose bandaged fragile body is in a Beirut hospital after an Israeli strike near their home engulfed her in flames.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon recorded more than 30 incidents this month resulting in property damage or injury to peacekeepers, about 20 of them from Israeli fire or action, a spokesman said Wednesday.

The Israeli army issued an evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon Thursday, including a Palestinian refugee camp, warning it was poised to hit Hezbollah targets in those areas.

"Hezbollah's terrorist activities force the IDF (army) to act forcefully against it in these areas, and we do not intend to harm you," the Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.

The family WhatsApp group chat buzzed with constant messages. Israel was escalating its airstrikes on villages and towns in southern Lebanon. Everyone was glued to the news.

Reda Gharib woke up uncharacteristically early that day, Sept. 23. Living a continent away in Senegal, he scrolled through videos and pictures shared by his sisters and aunts of explosions around their neighborhood in Tyre, Lebanon's ancient coastal city.

Negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah have made significant progress in the last 24 hours but the Biden administration hasn't reached a final agreement with either Israel or Lebanon, two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the issue told U.S. news portal Axios.

Hezbollah on Wednesday said it fired rockets at a military training camp southeast of Israel's Tel Aviv.

The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it targeted a camp "for training special units southeast of Tel Aviv with advanced rockets."

Lebanon's health ministry said at least 19 people were killed on Wednesday in Israeli strikes on two areas in the eastern Baalbek region.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before U.S. elections are held on November 5.

"The call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth" of November, Mikati said in a televised interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.

U.S. President Joe Biden met Wednesday with the president of Cyprus, the nearest European Union nation to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, to discuss new cease-fire efforts by the U.S. and mediators in the Middle East.

The small Mediterranean island has played a critical role in efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza since the war between Hamas and Israel began more than a year ago.