Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday that Lebanon was ready to bolster the army’s presence in the south after any ceasefire, adding that Israeli troops were making brief cross-border incursions.

"Currently we have 4,500 soldiers in south Lebanon, and we wish to increase them to between 7,000 and 11,000," Mikati told AFP in an interview, adding that as soon as a ceasefire is reached, "we can move soldiers" from other parts of the country to the south. "The information we have is that there are brief (Israeli) incursions" into south Lebanon, he added.

Israel wants its forces to enter south Lebanon by a depth of three kilometers and will leave it after cleansing the area of Hezbollah's presence, diplomatic sources said.

The U.N. called Tuesday for a "prompt, independent and thorough investigation" into an Israeli strike in the northern Lebanese village of Aito which it said had killed 22 people.

Hezbollah said Tuesday it had carried out a rocket attack targeting the suburbs of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv a day earlier.

Hezbollah fighters launched "a rocket barrage at Tel Aviv's suburbs" on Monday night, a statement said, adding that the attack came "in defense of Lebanon and its people, and responding to Israeli" attacks on "cities, villages and civilians."

Israel's military launched strikes Tuesday on eastern Lebanon, official Lebanese media reported, as Hezbollah fought Israeli soldiers after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed no mercy for the group.

Netanyahu's pledge on Monday came a day after a drone attack by Hezbollah on an Israeli base killed four soldiers, while volunteer rescuers said another 60 people were wounded.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday accused Israel of choosing to expand the conflict in the Middle East to implement "pre-existing plans" for the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the U.N. children’s agency said, warning of a “lost generation” in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.

Israel has escalated its campaign against Hezbollah, including launching a ground invasion, after a year of exchanges of fire during its war with Hamas in Gaza.

The U.N. Security Council has expressed “strong concern” after several U.N. peacekeepers were wounded when they came under fire in southern Lebanon, and has reiterated its support for the peacekeeping mission’s role “in supporting regional security.”

The council’s statement was its first reaction to the escalating attacks across the U.N.-drawn boundary between Israel and Lebanon, and the firing at frontline positions of the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL.

Israeli 0Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has “repeatedly asked” the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to temporarily leave the area where the Israeli military is operating.

The peacekeepers belong to the 10,000-strong United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, who have been patrolling the border area between Lebanon and Israel for nearly 50 years.

One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel's multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens.