The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lebanese Parliament chaired by MP Fadi Alameh has visited the Ain el-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp, accompanied by the Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon, Dorothee Klaus. The Director of the Office of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee, Abdel Nasser al-Ayyi, was also in attendance.

"This visit by MPs underscores Lebanon's support for the sustained work of UNRWA and its crucial humanitarian role in delivering essential services to Palestine refugees in Lebanon, and as such contributes to its stability. This comes amidst an unprecedented financial crisis looming over UNRWA due to the freeze of funding of 16 donors nations. Without funding to UNRWA resuming, UNRWA operations across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, will face comprised operations after March," UNRWA said in a statement.

U.S. administration and intelligence officials are concerned that Israel is planning a ground incursion into Lebanon that could be launched in the late spring or early summer if diplomatic efforts fail to push Hezbollah back from the northern border with Israel, CNN has quoted senior administrations officials and officials familiar with the intelligence as saying.

Austria's foreign minister on Thursday urged Israel and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group against escalating the conflict along the volatile Israel-Lebanon border and expressed hope for a pause in the fighting in Gaza in time for the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in March.

The Middle East has witnessed enough devastation and cruelty, said Alexander Schallenberg, speaking after meeting his Lebanese counterpart in Beirut.

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.