Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s visit to Lebanon was aimed at “informing his allies in Lebanon that Tehran is engaged in the international and Arab efforts to find a solution that would start by the halt of the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip,” a media report said.

Army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun is worried about the situation in south Lebanon, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper said Monday, quoting Aoun's visitors.

Aoun told his visitors that the escalation in the south does not bode well as Israel might drag the U.S. into a conflagration, the daily said.

A local Hezbollah official was seriously wounded Monday in an Israeli air strike on his car in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source told AFP.

Israeli forces and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire since war broke out on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.

Ex-PM and al-Mustaqbal Movement leader Saad Hariri held talks Monday at the Grand Serail in Beirut with caretaker PM Najib Mikati.

Mikati welcomed Hariri and hoped the Feb. 14 anniversary of the assassination of his father, ex-PM Rafik Hariri, will be "a unifying occasion that asserts the unity of the Lebanese in the face of the dangers that Lebanon is facing." He later threw a lunch banquet in Hariri's honor.

The latest visits to Lebanon and Israel by French diplomatic, military and security delegations aimed to reach a blueprint for settling the situation on the Lebanese-Israeli border, a media report said on Monday.

An Israeli drone struck Monday a car in the southern town of Bint Jbeil seriously wounding a Hezbollah official as Israeli warplanes bombed the southern villages of Tayr Harfa, al-Odaisseh, al-Khiam, Marwahin, al-Jebbayn and Maroun al-Rass.

The strikes came as tensions across the Middle East grow with the Israel-Hamas war, a drone attack last month that killed three U.S. troops in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border, and attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels on vessels passing through the Red Sea.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met Monday with leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Ziyad al-Nakhala.

Nasrallah discussed with Nakhala the latest developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and on other fronts, Hezbollah said in a statement.

Iran's top diplomat warned on Saturday that a full-blown attack on Lebanon would "spell the end" of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu during a Beirut trip, as cross-border tensions surge over the Gaza war.

Israeli forces overnight shelled the southern Lebanese border village of Houla, killing one person and wounding nine as they left a mosque after prayers, state-run National News Agency reported.

The agency said that in addition to the artillery shelling, a drone fired a missile toward the mosque.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon Saturday killed two civilians and a Hezbollah member, officials said, while security sources told AFP a senior Hamas officer had survived an assassination attempt near Sidon.

While the Israel-Lebanon violence has been largely contained to the border area, the strike on the Hamas official took place in the coastal town of Jadra, about 40 kilometers from the closest point in Israel.