A 25-strong Israeli naval force made a landing on Batroun's shore at dawn Friday and abducted Hezbollah official Imad Fadel Amhaz from a chalet, media reports and security sources said on Saturday.

"Israeli Navy SEALs captured last night Imad Amhaz -- a senior member of Hezbollah's naval force -- in an operation in Northern Lebanon," an Israeli official told U.S. news portal Axios.

The U.N. peacekeeping chief says the U.N. force in southern Lebanon is determined to stay, not only because of its mandate monitoring attacks by Israel and Hezbollah but because the departure of peacekeepers would likely mean U.N. facilities would be taken over by one of the warring parties.

“That would be very bad for many reasons, including the perception of impartiality and neutrality of the United Nations,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix said in a U.N. interview.

Israel launched dozens of intense airstrikes across Lebanon's northeastern farming villages on Friday, killing at least 52 people and wounding scores more, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported.

In central Gaza, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in a barrage of Israeli aerial attacks that began Thursday, hospital officials said.

Perched on a hilltop a short walk from the Israeli border, the tiny southern Lebanese village of Ramyah has almost been wiped off the map. In a neighboring village, satellite photos show a similar scene: a hill once covered with houses, now reduced to a gray smear of rubble.

Israeli warplanes and ground forces have blasted a trail of destruction through southern Lebanon the past month. The aim, Israel says, is to debilitate Hezbollah, push it away from the border and end more than a year of Hezbollah fire into northern Israel.

Iran's supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with "a crushing response" over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Hospital officials in Gaza said on Friday that the death toll from Israeli strikes on the central parts of the territory the day before has risen from 16 to 25 as more bodies have been recovered.

The Palestinians killed in the series of strikes on central Gaza include five children and seven women, the officials said.

More than a year into a war that has ricocheted across the Middle East, Israeli troops are still battling Hamas in the most heavily destroyed and isolated part of the Gaza Strip.

In northern Gaza, Hamas militants carry out hit-and-run attacks from bombed-out buildings. Residents say Israeli forces have raided shelters for the displaced, forcing people out at gunpoint. First responders say they can barely operate because of the Israeli bombardment.

Israel’s Cabinet on Friday passed a budget for 2025 Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, ramping up defense spending amid the war in Gaza and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.

The budget, which must still be approved by Israel’s parliament before taking effect, increased allotted defense spending to at least $27.2 billion, Israeli media reported, though that could increase to $40 billion pending further cabinet discussions.

The U.N. humanitarian aid coordination agency is pointing to a new “wave of displacement” in Beirut's southern suburbs after the Israeli army issued new orders for people to leave.

Spokesman Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, citing local officials, says the new displacement orders for the capital’s southern suburbs were followed shortly afterward by heavy airstrikes.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike on a mountain town overlooking Beirut has killed three people and wounded five.

The ministry gave no further details about the early Friday airstrike on the edge of Qmatiyeh, in the Aley district southeast of Beirut.