Hezbollah said Saturday that it launched suicide drones at an Israeli artillery position in Beit Hillel that had targeted Lebanese villages and civilians on Friday.

Hamas has said in a statement that its Doha-based top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, has received Mohammed Takkoush, the head of Lebanon's al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim political and armed group in Lebanon that has been fighting against Israeli forces alongside Hezbollah.

The two Lebanese groups have been part of a “support front” that has maintained low-level clashes with Israeli forces with the aim of pulling them away from Gaza to ease the pressure on Hamas. In recent weeks, however, there have been increasing fears of a full-blown war on the Lebanon-Israel front.

The United Nations has warned that the increasing intensity of exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel “heightens the risk of a full-scale war.”

“Escalation can and must be avoided,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has reassured that there will be no broad Israeli war on Lebanon in the near future.

“The possibilities of expanding the war are absent in the near future,” Qassem said in an interview with Russia’s Sputnik radio station.

Hezbollah targeted Friday several Israeli posts while the Israeli army bombed several towns in south Lebanon.

Israeli artillery shelled the outskirts of al-Hebbarieh and Rashaya al-Fokhar and warplanes raided the southern border town of Markaba injuring one person and the al-Rihan mountain in Iqlim al-Tuffah far away from the border.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has again criticized Hezbollah for starting a war with Israel, at the expense of the Lebanese.

"There are 22 Arab states, why is Lebanon alone paying the price of what is happening in the region," Geagea asked in a televised interview on Thursday evening, adding that Hezbollah is hijacking the state's decisions. "Hezbollah is in Lebanon but its heart is with Iran," Geagea charged.

Hezbollah Chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met Friday with a delegation from Hamas headed by Khalil al Hayyeh.

Nasrallah and the delegation discussed the latest developments in Gaza and on the other "support fronts" in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, a Hezbollah statement said.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s talks in Paris on Wednesday with French special envoy for Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian tackled “the situation in Lebanon in terms of the border war between Israel and Hezbollah and the stalled presidential file,” a media report said.

“The two mediators agreed on the continuation of coordination and the exchange of information regarding the situation in Lebanon,” al-Liwaa newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Israeli military said Thursday its forces were "striking launch posts in southern Lebanon" after "numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory".

It said that most were intercepted by air defense systems but that "fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel" following the attacks.

Freya, a 6-month-old lion cub rescued from the wildlife trade in Lebanon, poked a curious nose out of her transport crate and sniffed the air. Satisfied, she took her first cautious steps in her new forever home in a sanctuary in South Africa.

Freya's relocation to the Drakenstein Lion Park is only a partial success story.