Hezbollah fired Thursday volleys of Katyusha rockets at Eilon in northern Israel in response to the killing of two civilians in Israeli strikes, as warplanes raided Wednesday the towns of Siddiqin and Kafra, also injuring 14 people.

Hezbollah also attacked soldiers in Jal al-Alam with artillery shells, a gathering of Israeli troops on the Cobra Hill and an Israeli post in the occupied Shebaa Farms.

Caretaker Defense Minister Maurice Slim on Wednesday said a newspaper distorted remarks voiced by him about the Lebanese Army’s preparedness.

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire Wednesday a day after a U.N. official called for an end to the "dangerous cycle of violence", as tensions increased on the border.

An Israeli airstrike targeted the house of Hezbollah commander Ali Wehbe in Bint Jbeil, while Israeli warplanes bombed Beit Leef, Ramyeh, Ainata and al-Khraybeh.

The United States said Tuesday that it does not want to witness an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi has said that Hezbollah must “pay a very high price” for its continued attacks on northern Israel.

The U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka is “deeply concerned by the gradual expansion in the exchange of fire across the Blue Line in scope, scale and intensity, which increases the risks of a broader conflagration and undermines Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006),” her office said in a statement. 

“She urges an immediate halt to this dangerous cycle of violence and return to a cessation of hostilities,” the statement said.

Hezbollah shelled a military base in Israel's Ga'aton with dozens of Katyusha rockets and launched a second attack with guided missiles on the Meron air control base in what it said were responses to Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns.

The Ga'aton base lies around nine kilometers from the border with Lebanon and the attack is the first to target it since the beginning of hostilities.

UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Aroldo Lázaro on Tuesday sounded the alarm that over the past days there has been “a concerning shift in the exchanges of fire” between Israel and Hezbollah.

“This conflict has already claimed too many lives and caused significant damage to houses and public infrastructure. It has jeopardized the livelihoods and changed the life of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Blue Line. Yet we now see an expansion and intensification of strikes,” Lázaro said in a statement distributed by UNIFIL.

Israeli warplanes struck Tuesday southern towns deep inside Lebanon, including a town near Sidon, almost 30 kilometers from the nearest Israeli boundary.

The series of airstrikes came shortly after Hezbollah launched a salvo of rockets at the Israeli Meron air control base in retaliation for deadly Israeli strikes on east Lebanon.

Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem has warned that the group has much more weapons to use if Israel expands the war.

"If the Israelis go too far, we will retaliate more. All what we have used until now in the fighting is the minimum of what we own," he said in a speech Monday in an apparent reference to Hezbollah's huge arsenal including precision-guided missiles and explosive drones.