Hezbollah confirmed Wednesday that Israel killed Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, the apparent successor of its slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike, without saying when or where it happened.

Western countries have floated the idea of deploying international forces to Lebanon alongside the country's army in case of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Western diplomat said Wednesday.

Some 10,000 peacekeepers with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) are already deployed in the country's south, but the diplomat said a separate multi-national troop deployment was under consideration.

Hezbollah said it fired rockets at a military base in the Haifa area in northern Israel on Wednesday in response to Israeli raids on Lebanon.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Wednesday called on the government to “declare its commitement to U.N. resolutions, especially 1559, to avoid a worse situation,” while noting that some of U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein’s proposals “encroach on Lebanese sovereignty.”

France is focusing on raising hundreds of millions of dollars in aid at a conference for war-ravaged Lebanon on Thursday, but any prospect of a wider diplomatic breakthrough has been stymied by the absence of key players.

The French government nevertheless hopes that the gathering can keep diplomacy alive around the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has so far claimed more than 1,500 Lebanese lives and displaced 700,000 people.

Leaders of the BRICS group called on Wednesday for Israel to stop targeting U.N. staff after incidents of Israeli troops firing on U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon.

"We strongly condemn the attacks on U.N. staff and threats to their security and call on Israel to immediately cease such actions," the group said in a joint statement.

The U.S. has “not seen evidence” at this point that there is a Hezbollah bunker underneath al-Sahel hospital in southern Beirut, as Israel has alleged, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters traveling with him in Rome on Wednesday.

Since Israel began bombarding Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon's national air carrier has become a local icon simply by continuing to do its job.

Middle East Airlines is the only commercial airline still operating out of the Beirut airport, located on the coast next to the densely populated suburbs.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Arab counterparts in London on Friday on the Gaza and Lebanon wars, the State Department said.

Blinken will meet Arab foreign ministers in the British capital after talks Thursday in Qatar, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters as Blinken flew from Israel to Saudi Arabia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

Baerbock, upon her arrival Wednesday in Beirut, said that “we must now work with our partners in the USA, Europe and the Arab world to find a viable diplomatic solution that safeguards the legitimate security interests of both Israel and Lebanon.”