Israel conducted fresh strikes on southern Gaza's overcrowded border town of Rafah on Friday, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, with key backer the United States warning of a looming "disaster".

The Israeli military told AFP on Thursday that its aircraft struck a "Hezbollah commander" in south Lebanon, claiming he was involved in cross-border rocket attacks.

The confirmation came after a Lebanese security source said earlier that a military official of Hezbollah was "seriously wounded" in an Israeli air strike on a car in the city of Nabatiyeh in the heart of south Lebanon.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will arrive Friday in Beirut, Iran’s ambassador said.

Caretaker PM Najib Mikati met Thursday with a French delegation comprising the foreign ministry’s political affairs director, the defense ministry’s international and strategic relations director, the deputy head of the N. Africa and Mideast dept. at the foreign ministry, and the French ambassador to Lebanon.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Washington is still exerting diplomatic efforts to resolve the border conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in a peaceful way.

Security forces fired tear gas on Thursday to disperse hundreds of protesters, mainly retired soldiers, who tried to break through the fence leading to the Grand Serail in downtown Beirut.

The retired members of the armed forces gathered at Beirut's Riad al-Solh Square to protest their low salaries and blocked the roads leading to the Grand Serail where Cabinet convened Thursday.

Hezbollah targeted Thursday three military posts and a command center in northern Israel as Israeli artillery shelled several border towns in south Lebanon.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it had attacked the Jalil command center in Kiryat Shmona, the Branit post, soldiers in Metula, and the Radar post in the occupied Shebaa Farms. An officer and two soldiers were wounded in the Kiryat Shmona attack, the Israeli army radio said.

Former Lebanese ambassador to the U.N. Nawaf Salam, whose name was once floated as a potential PM candidate, has been elected as the head of the International Court of Justice for a three-year period.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Salam and congratulated him on the new post.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has accused Hezbollah of seeking to “obtain the presidency and Lebanon’s government in return for withdrawing weapons from the border” with Israel.

A civilian was killed Wednesday in a drone airstrike on a house in the southern border town of al-Khiam. Two other civilians were injured, media reports said.

Israeli warplanes had earlier at dawn targeted al-Wazzani water pumps, after two airstrikes overnight on the southern border towns of Houla and Bani Hayyan.