Violent Israeli airstrikes on Thursday targeted hills surrounding several Bekaa towns including Hermel and Shmestar.

The strikes killed two people, according to the Health Ministry, while several children were wounded by flying glass shrapnel from their school's windows in Shmestar. Many students also fainted according to media reports.

President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri met Thursday with head of the ceasefire monitoring committee, U.S. General Clearfield, amid intensified Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon.

Aoun and Salam urged Clearfield to pressure Israel to halt its almost-daily attacks and end its occupation of five hills in south Lebanon, stressing that Lebanon is committed to the agreement.

U.S. envoy Tom Barrack on Wednesday said that “Lebanon must resolve its own divisions and reclaim its sovereignty.”

“On October 23, 1983, 241 U.S. Marines, sailors, and soldiers, 58 French military personnel, and six Lebanese civilians were killed when a suicide bomber destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut -- one of the deadliest attacks on Americans overseas,” Barrack said in a post on the X platform.

President Joseph Aoun stressed Wednesday the need to hold the parliamentary elections on time, adding that the participation of expats is a must.

Aoun's comments come amid tensions over the current electoral law which only allows expats to vote for six newly-introduced seats in parliament, with Sixty-five MPs -- forming a parliamentary majority -- demanding to amend the law in order to allow expats to vote for all 128 seats.

It has been agreed to intensify the meetings of the Mechanism ceasefire committee to follow up on the implementation of the Lebanese Army plan for arms monopolization, a security source told Al-Arabiya’s Al-Hadath channel.

“10,000 Lebanese Army troops are deployed in the South Litani region,” the source said.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has said that “Hezbollah must become a normal political party without an armed wing.”

“There will be no backing down from the state’s monopolization of military force,” Salam added, in an interview with French magazine Paris Match.

Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir on Tuesday made an inspection visit to an ongoing Israeli military exercise near Lebanon’s border.

"Alongside continuing operational activity, thwarting threats and maintaining a high level of preparedness and readiness, you must return to training to improve efficiency and preparedness for war on all fronts," Zamir told commanders.

The file of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel is expected to be activated upon the arrival in Beirut of Michel Issa, the new U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, a media report said.

Issa, who will arrive in Beirut in early November, will meet with Lebanese officials and accurately relay his administration’s stance on the Lebanese file, sources told al-Binaa newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

Lebanese pop star Fadel Shaker who turned himself in this month after 12 years on the run appeared in court Tuesday in Beirut for the first time.

Fadel Shaker had been hiding out in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh since bloody street clashes erupted between Sunni Muslim militants and the Lebanese army in June 2013 in the coastal city of Sidon.

One person was killed in an Israeli drone strike that targeted a motorbike in Ain Qana in Iqlim Al-Tuffah on Wednesday.

The Israeli army claimed that the man killed, Issa Karbala, was a unit commander with Hezbollah's al-Radwan force and had been "involved in moving weapons inside Lebanon" and "advancing terrorist plots against Israel."