Israeli artillery shelling targeted Wednesday Ramia, Beit Leef, and the outskirts of the border towns of al-Labbouneh, al-Naqoura, Rmeish, Aita al-Shaab, Halta and al-Mari, after three rockets landed in Zarit and Shtula, in the Israeli upper western Galilee. Israel also shelled the outskirts of Mays al-Jabal, Blida, Houla, Mhaibib and Yaroun after the Israeli posts of al-Assi, al-Bayyad, Brket Risha, Yiftah, al-Jerdah and Dovev were targeted from Lebanon.

The football pitch in the border town of Houla was also targeted with three missiles, as Israel fired shells that didn't explode at a house and a car.

After an Israeli airstrike killed a grandmother and her three grandchildren in Lebanon’s Ainata and Hezbollah’s retaliatory shelling of Kiryat Shmona, U.S. and European diplomatic efforts intensified in a bid to contain the situation and avoid an all-out war between Lebanon and Israel, media reports said.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s surprise visit to Beirut is “part of this inclination,” al-Binaa newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The parliamentary bloc of the Free Patriotic Movement has reiterated its objection to the extension of the term of Army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun ahead of his planned retirement in January, considering it "unconstitutional."

"There are legal solutions to avoid the vacancy," the Strong Lebanon bloc said in a statement Tuesday.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s held a “good” meeting Tuesday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, parliamentary sources informed on the talks said.

“This is reflected in the course that the Americans are taking and the efforts that they are exerting to prevent an expansion of the conflict,” the sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

G7 foreign ministers called Wednesday on Iran to refrain from providing support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and to use its influence to de-escalate regional tensions.

"We call on Iran to refrain from providing support for Hamas and taking further actions that destabilize the Middle East, including support for Lebanese Hezbollah and other non-state actors, and to use its influence with those groups to de-escalate regional tensions," the ministers said in a joint statement after talks in Japan.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Tuesday that Israel does not have "any intention to fight a war against Hezbollah."

He however warned that if Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah "commits a mistake" he will be "destroying Lebanon."

When Hezbollah announced last week that its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would deliver his first public speech since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, much of the region held its breath.

Would Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Arab world's most powerful paramilitary force, continue its limited exchanges of fire with Israel or throw itself wholeheartedly into the war? In Lebanon, streets emptied as people sat glued to their screens to watch, ready to parse his words along with decision-makers in Israel and across the Mideast.

Hezbollah said Tuesday that it fired rockets at Israel's artillery positions in the occupied Golan Heights in response to an overnight Israeli strike on a Hezbollah post on the outskirts of the town of Aramta in the Iqlim al-Tuffah region.

Aramta lies about 20 kilometers north of the border and is a Hezbollah stronghold. The strike was one of the deepest inside Lebanon since the fighting along the border erupted on October 8.

A journalist with Lebanese Al-Mayadeen television channel has filed a police complaint against an Israeli journalist who she alleged had "intimidated" her.

Hana Mohamed said Israeli journalist Haim Etgar confronted her at a post office after allegedly impersonating a postal employee and "threatening" her.

Western and non-Arab nations intensified their contacts over the past hours with Lebanese officials in a bid to contain the tensions on the southern front with Israel and avoid descent into a bigger confrontation, media reports said.

“These contacts expressed desire to preserve security and stability in Lebanon, especially on the southern front, and carried a renewed U.S. assurance that Israel does not intend to engage in a confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported.