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.

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.

Lebanon's national basketball team beat Angola 74-70 on Thursday to clinch a semifinal spot in the Olympic qualifying tournament that will be held in Valencia, Spain.

Omari Spellman scored 22 points and grabbed 13 rebounds. Karim Zeinoun meanwhile added 15, including a personal 7-0 run early in the fourth quarter when he turned a game that was tied at 49 into one in which Lebanon led 56-49 — and it wouldn't trail again.

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.

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.

Hezbollah said it launched "more than 200" rockets and a salvo of "explosive drones" at Israeli military positions Thursday, in one of its largest barrages, in response to a strike that killed a senior commander of the Iran-backed group.

A Hezbollah statement said that "as part of the response to the... assassination carried out by the enemy" in southern Lebanon's Tyre area on Wednesday, its fighters fired "more than 200 rockets of various types" at five Israeli bases across the border including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

Hezbollah said it fired more than 100 rockets at Israeli positions on Wednesday in retaliation for a strike that killed a senior commander in south Lebanon, the movement's second such loss in recent weeks.