Since last week, tensions have soared as Iran and Tehran-backed groups, including Hezbollah, vowed revenge for the killing of Hamas's political leader in Tehran and Israel's killing of the Lebanese group's military chief in Beirut.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

Hezbollah said overnight it had launched dozens of Katyusha rockets at northern Israel.

The Iran-backed group said its latest attack, on Beit Hillel in northern Israel, was in response to Israel's attacks on Kfarkela and Deir Siriane in south Lebanon which, it said, had injured civilians there.

MP Alain Aoun of the Strong Lebanon bloc has been officially expelled from the Free Patriotic Movement, the FPM’s media department said on Friday.

The FPM said the decision follows “two recommendations issued by the FPM’s Council of Elders that is led by (former) president Michel Aoun.”

UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, accompanied by Defense Secretary John Healey, ended a one-day visit to Lebanon yesterday, Thursday, the British embassy said.

Truce negotiations between Israel and Hamas are expected to resume soon despite the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported on Friday.

“Haniyeh’s assassination will contribute to pushing forward the negotiations over an agreement in Gaza,” the Israeli corporation quoted unnamed sources as saying.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday stressed that “in the face of the systematic and dangerous Israeli escalation,” Lebanon “can only stress its right to defend its land, sovereignty and dignity with all means available.”

“We have informed brotherly and friendly countries that we are advocates of peace not war, because we are seeking sustainable stability through regaining the occupied parts of our dear south and compelling the Israeli enemy to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 with all its stipulations,” Mikati said, during a visit to the Army Command on the occasion of Army Day.

Hezbollah targeted Friday Israeli soldiers in the Dhaira post with artillery shells and a post in the occupied Kfarshouba Hills, as it resumed its operations against Israel, three days after Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander.

Israeli drones meanwhile raided the southern towns of Rab Tlatine and Dhaira.

Free Patriotic movement chief Jebran Bassil said the FPM cannot stand idly by as Israel strikes Beirut and kills children.

Bassil's comment, late Thursday, came two days after an Israeli air strike killed a Hezbollah top commander in Haret Hreik. The raid on the Beirut suburb, an overcrowded residential area, killed siblings Amira and Hassan Fadlallah as well as three women and injured dozens of civilians.

A Syrian family of four were killed Thursday in an Israeli strike on their house in the southern village of Shamaa in the Tyre district.

A mother and her three children were killed as Israeli warplanes targeted their house, local media reports said. Several others were injured in the strike.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Thursday that the group was bound to respond to Israel's killing of its top military commander Fouad Shukur, saying his death and that of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh "crossed" red lines.

"You do not know what red lines you crossed," he said, addressing Israel during a speech broadcast at Shukur's funeral.