Several Israeli soldiers were wounded when Hezbollah launched a drone attack from Lebanon on Sunday, both the Israeli army and the militant group said.

There have been repeated exchanges of fire across the border since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October, raising fears of a wider conflict.

Israeli warplanes on Sunday violently bombed the outskirts of the southern Lebanese border towns of Yaroun and Maroun al-Ras as artillery shelling targeted the peripheries of at least eight Lebanese border towns.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday reiterated his solidarity with the residents of the clashes-hit Lebanese south.

Referring to a recent visit to the South, al-Rahi said: “We told residents that our solidarity with them includes all their needs and the first outcry that we voice with them is: we don’t want a war that would destroy our homes, kill our children and displace us.”

A United Nations peacekeeping position in southern Lebanon was hit on Saturday without causing casualties, the U.N. force said, adding it was seeking to verify the source of the fire.

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported that an Israeli Merkava tank targeted the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) position near the border across from Metula in northern Israel.

Israel on Saturday shelled the outskirts of the southern Lebanese border towns of Naqoura, Kfarshouba, al-Wazzani, Blida, Mhaybib, al-Dhayra, Alma al-Shaab and Tayr Harfa amid reports of Hezbollah attacks on Israel's Misgav Am and a surveillance pole near al-Wazzani.

The Israeli army said Saturday that it had fired overnight "toward the source of" unspecified launches from Lebanon towards Israeli territory.

In the seaside settlement of Nahariya, the shock still lingers on Daniel Bussidan's face. A recent rocket attack killed his friend's father, and now this Israeli beach town, the closest to Lebanon, stands on edge.

"I'm scared from the attack," said the 26-year-old who works in his father's pastry shop on the Mediterranean resort's eucalyptus-lined main street.

Three Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian have been killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car in the south of Syria, a war monitor said.

"A Syrian and three Lebanese Hezbollah fighters from the surveillance and missile-launching unit were killed in the Israeli drone strike on their rented car" in Madinat al-Baath town in the province of Quneitra, close to the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Three Lebanese soldiers were lightly injured overnight by Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon, medical sources said, while the Lebanese Army reported no casualties in a second attack on a military hospital.

"Israeli artillery fire targeted the vicinity of a Lebanese Army post in Ras el-Naqoura, lightly injuring three soldiers," a medical source told AFP.

On the occasion of the International Anti-Corruption Day, the European Union and Expertise France, the French public agency for international technical cooperation, launched a EUR 12 million project to support progress in key areas of public administration reform in Lebanon.

The four-year project, funded by the European Union, is aligned with the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (2020-2025), the opportunities of reform identified by the IMF Staff-Level Agreement and the principles of modern public administration. It also complements the current work done through the Lebanon Financing Facility for the Reform, Recovery and Reconstruction Framework (3RF).

A joint delegation from the French defense and foreign ministries will arrive today, Friday in Beirut coming from Israel, the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.