The slow-simmering cross-border conflict between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated Wednesday, reviving fears that the daily clashes could expand into an all-out war.

A rocket fired from Lebanon struck the northern Israeli town of Safed, killing a 20-year-old female soldier and wounding at least eight people.

The civilian death toll from two Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon has risen to 10, Lebanese state media reported Thursday, making the previous day the deadliest one in more than four months of cross-border exchanges.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for the strikes, which hit in the city of Nabatiyeh and a village in southern Lebanon, just hours after projectiles from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier.

Thousands of people gathered in the Lebanese capital Wednesday to commemorate the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri and urge his son Saad to make a political comeback.

Waving the pale-blue flags of Saad Hariri's political party the al-Mustaqbal Movement, the crowd clapped and cheered as he paid his respects at his father's tomb in central Beirut.

Rockets from Lebanon targeted the Israeli army's northern headquarters in Safad on Wednesday morning, killing a female soldier and wounding seven others, Israeli reports said.

Another Israeli soldier was found dead later in the day, raising the death toll to two, reports said.

Cyprus has said it is in discussions with Lebanon over the return of 116 Syrian migrants rescued off its coast after Beirut refused to accept them back.

The migrants were rescued in international waters 30 nautical miles off Cyprus at the weekend after departing Lebanon by boat, Cypriot officials said.

Israeli municipal elections in areas near the Lebanese border and the Gaza Strip are expected to be postponed from February 27 to November 19, after a parliamentary committee recommended it Tuesday.

"The internal affairs committee of the Knesset (parliament) has decided to support the interior minister's proposal to postpone the elections to November 19, 2024 in the nine areas evacuated by the government decision," it said in a statement.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday that “intimidation” and offers of “political gains” will not convince Hezbollah to halt its attacks on Israel if the war on Gaza does not stop.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Tuesday snapped back at the Free Patriotic Movement over the issue of the powers of the caretaker Cabinet during the ongoing presidential vacuum.

Ex-PM and al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri met Tuesday at the Center House in Beirut with American Ambassador Lisa Johnson and Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

Johnson told reporters as she left the Center House that the meeting with Hariri was "excellent".

Hezbollah said Tuesday it has targeted several Israeli posts and seized an Israeli Skylark drone.

In successive statements, Hezbollah said it has successfully attacked groups of soldiers in the Mattat barracks, al-Marj post and the Hunin fortress near Margaliot. The group also targeted surveillance equipment in Hadb Yarin and a police building in Kiryat Shmona.