Japan on Thursday dispatched two Self Defense Force planes to prepare for a possible airlift of Japanese citizens from Lebanon.

Two C-2 transport aircraft are expected to arrive in Jordan and Greece on Friday, Japan NHK national television reported.

The Israeli military said Thursday it conducted an air strike that killed 15 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

The air force "precisely struck the Bint Jbeil municipality building in which Hezbollah terrorists were operating, alongside large quantities of Hezbollah weapons stored in the building. As part of the strike, approximately 15 Hezbollah terrorists were eliminated," said the statement.

The son-in-law of Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah - who was killed last week in a massive Israeli strike in south Beirut - was killed in an Israeli raid in Damascus Wednesday, an NGO said.

"Hassan Jaafar Qassir, the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, was among two Lebanese victims of the Israeli raid which targeted an apartment in a residential building in the Mazze district of Damascus," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a claim a source close to Hezbollah confirmed to AFP.

Hezbollah said it fought off a bid by the Israeli army to advance at a border point in southern Lebanon on Thursday.

Hezbollah "repelled with artillery fire an attempt by enemy Israeli forces to advance at Fatima's Gate", it said, a day after Israel said eight of its soldiers had been killed in south Lebanon.

Nine people were killed in an Israeli air raid on a Hezbollah rescue facility in the heart of Beirut late Wednesday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The airstrike in the residential Bashoura district targeted an apartment in a multi-story building that houses an office of the Islamic Health Organization, a group of civilian first responders affiliated to Hezbollah.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat met Wednesday in Ain el-Tineh, as the region braced for further escalation following an Israeli incursion in south Lebanon and Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel.

Mikati called after the meeting for an immediate ceasefire, immediate implementation of Resolution 1701, the deployment of the Lebanese army south of Litani and coordination with UNIFIL.

The United Nations chief is demanding a halt to the escalation of “tit-for-tat violence” that he warned is leading people in the Middle East “straight over the cliff.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Wednesday that in just a week the alarming situation in Lebanon has gone from bad “to much, much worse.”

The Lebanese army said an Israeli drone wounded one of its soldiers Wednesday in an attack when the unit was working in the country's south.

"A soldier was wounded due to an attack by an Israeli enemy drone as an army unit was working to open the Marjayoun-Hasbaya road," the Lebanese army said on X.

A dog clings to Hussein Hamza inside a car as he pans his camera around to show the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon.

"Poor thing. Look at this, he's clinging to me out of fear," Hamza says in the video he posted online. "A missile hit here," he said, his voice shaking.

The Biden administration says there is a significant difference between Israeli actions that have expanded its war against the Iranian-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran's retaliatory missile attack against Israel, which it condemned as escalatory.

In carefully calibrated remarks, officials across the administration are defending the surge in attacks by Israel against Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, while still pressing for peace and vowing retribution after Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday.