Israeli warplanes raided Thursday the southern border town of Aitaroun, as fears mounted that months of cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah could turn into a full-fledged conflict.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Wednesday that efforts should be exerted to prevent Lebanon from being turned into “an arena for armed conflicts starting from the south.”

“The relevant U.N. resolutions must be implemented in order to put an end to Israel’s expansionist ambitions, and accordingly not linking Lebanon’s stability and interests to extremely complicated conflicts and endless wars,” Mikati added, during a joint press conference in Beirut with the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib on Wednesday traveled to Brussels for talks with European Union officials.

Bou Habib will then head to the United States for talks with U.S. officials in Washington and U.N. officials in New York. The minister will also visit Canada to meet with his Canadian counterpart.

The Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, met Wednesday in Ain el-Tineh with Speaker Nabih Berri after which he said that “the solution for the presidential crisis begins from this headquarters.”

“The Christian parties certainly bear responsibility, but they are not alone in power and others must shoulder their responsibilities,” Parolin added.

Israeli artillery shelled Wednesday Kfarshouba and Wadi Hamoul in south Lebanon, while warplanes raided Aita al-Shaab, al-Khiam and al-Dhayra and a drone struck a power line in al-Taybeh.

Later on Wednesday, Hezbollah said it targeted buildings used by Israeli troops in the Metula settlement near the border in response to Israeli strikes on a number of buildings in the southern towns of Khiam and Kfarshouba.

Hezbollah launched Tuesday an array of suicide drones at an Israeli military base in Nahal Gershom in response to Monday’s strikes in the Bekaa.

The group later targeted the Berkat Risha and the Bayyad Blida posts in northern Israel.

Parliament Speaker and head of Hezbollah-allied Amal movement Nabih Berri is worried about a war conflagration, he told Russian state-controlled international news television RT.

"This month is crucial, we are in a sensitive and delicate stage," Berri told RT in an interview Monday, adding that the situation is "unsettling."

A “spiritual-national summit” was held Tuesday in Bkerki in the presence of the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, amid an apparent Shiite boycott over recent remarks by Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi.

The summit was attended by al-Rahi, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Sami Abi al-Mona, Orthodox Armenian Catholicos Aram I, Catholic Armenian Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI, Islamic Alawite Council chief Sheikh Ali Qaddour, MP Pierre Bou Assi representing Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh, and MP Nadim Gemayel representing Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel.

Israeli artillery shelled Monday the southern town of al-Taybeh, targeting members of the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee, as they tried to extinguish a fire following an Israeli drone attack on the town.

The shelling injured a member of the Islamic Health Committee in the chest, the National News Agency said.

Tensions engulfed the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in Sidon on Monday after a member of the Palestinian National Security Force was shot dead.

Annahar newspaper identified the slain member as Yassine Akl, saying he was killed in “the Ras al-Ahmar area that is controlled by Islamist militants.”