France opposes Lebanon "becoming a new Gaza," French President Emmanuel Macron said during a visit to Canada, citing the "absolutely shocking" number of civilian casualties.

"Israel must stop its strikes and Hezbollah must stop its retaliating," Macron told a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Thursday.

Israel and Hezbollah each have strong incentives to heed international calls for a cease-fire that could avert all-out war — but that doesn't mean they will.

Hezbollah is reeling after a sophisticated attack on personal devices killed and wounded hundreds of its members. Israeli airstrikes have killed two top commanders in Beirut in less than a week, and warplanes have pounded large parts of Lebanon, killing over 600 people.

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Thursday night that "Israel shares the aims" of the U.S.-led initiative for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon.

When she first heard about the evacuation warnings Israel was sending to residents of Lebanon, Aline Naser's thoughts immediately turned to Gaza.

For the past year, the 26-year-old Beirut resident has been following with horror the reports about besieged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip ordered to move from one place to the other, fleeing to "humanitarian zones" only to be bombed and ordered to leave again.

Norway has issued an international wanted notice for a man linked to a Bulgaria-based company that may have been involved in the dissemination of exploding electronic devices to the militant Hezbollah group that killed dozens and wounded thousands in Lebanon last week.

The notice is part of a multi-country investigation trying to piece together how thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies were rigged to explode and their trail to Lebanon.

The Philippines is preparing to evacuate thousands of its citizens from Lebanon

The Philippine government is bracing to evacuate thousands of Filipino workers in Lebanon in case the deadly conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group further escalates, Philippine officials said Friday.

Authorities in Lebanon said a family of nine was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a town near the border with Israel.

The state-run National News Agency reported the deaths in the strike early Friday in Shebaa. It put the strike at 3 a.m. local.

An Israeli air strike on Friday killed five Syrian soldiers near the border with Lebanon, the official news agency SANA reported, citing a military source.

"The Israeli enemy carried out an aerial attack... on one of our military positions near Kfar Yabous on the Syrian-Lebanese border," SANA said, adding that five Syrian soldiers were killed and one was wounded.

Hezbollah said its forces fired a salvo of rockets at the Israeli city of Tiberias on Friday.

In a statement, Hezbollah said it was responding to Israel's "savage" strikes on Lebanese towns and civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said overnight that Israel "shares the aims" of a U.S.-led initiative for achieving a ceasefire on Lebanon, after remarks by him and other Israeli officials appeared to pour cold water on the proposal hours earlier.