CIA Director William Burns is in the Middle East meeting with intelligence partners and leaders of several countries on matters including ones related to the war between Israel and Hamas, a U.S. official said.

Topics include the fate of some 240 people being held hostage by the Hamas militant group in Gaza, and the U.S. commitment to prevent state and nonstate actors from widening the Israel-Hamas war regionally, the U.S. official said.

Hamas militants on Monday fired 16 rockets from south Lebanon towards northern Israel, the Palestinian group's armed wing announced, saying they targeted areas south of the Israeli coastal city of Haifa.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said the strikes came "in response to the occupation's (Israel's) massacres and its aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip."

Israel shelled Monday the outskirts of the southern border towns of Alma al-Shaab, al-Naqoura, and al-Khiyam.

Meanwhile, Israeli residents near Lebanon's border have been asked to stay home over a suspected security incident.

Students in Lebanon observed Monday a moment of silence for Rimas, Taline and Layan, ages 10, 12 and 14, and their grandmother who were killed Sunday evening by an Israeli airstrike in the southern town of Ainata.

The death of the three children and their grandmother raised the number of civilians killed on the Lebanese side in the border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel to at least 14, despite Hezbollah's warning that if Israel kills Lebanese civilians, it will be considered a violation of the rules of engagement and it will retaliate by attacking civilian targets.

The British Foreign Office said on Monday it was pulling out some of its embassy staff from Lebanon over fears that Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip could widen into the region.

"Events in Lebanon are fast moving. The situation has potential to deteriorate quickly and with no warning," the Foreign Office said in updated travel advice for Lebanon.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Monday said he strongly condemns “this genocidal, destructive and displacement war against the Palestinian people.”

“We express solidarity with them, defend their cause, support the two-state solution and call on the international community to work on stopping this war,” the patriarch added.

Hezbollah on Sunday said it fired rockets at Israel’s north in response to the killing of Lebanese civilians in an Israeli drone strike earlier in the day.

“In response to the brutal and ugly crime that the Zionist enemy committed this afternoon by targeting a civilian car on the al-Maaysra road between Ainata and Aitaroun, which resulted in the martyrdom of a woman and her three toddler grandchildren, the jihadi fighters of the Islamic Resistance shelled the Kiryat Shmona settlement with several Katyusha rockets,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Four paramedics were wounded when an Israeli drone bombed an ambulance for the Amal Movement-affiliated Islamic Risala Scout Association on the outskirts of the south Lebanon town of Tayr Harfa.

The National News Agency said the injuries ranged from light to moderate.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati during their meeting in Jordan for his leadership “in preventing Lebanon from being pulled into a war that the Lebanese people do not want,” the U.S. State Department said.

Mikati for his part stressed “the priority of working for a ceasefire in Gaza to halt the continuous Israeli aggression there, and also working on stopping the Israeli aggression against south Lebanon,” Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

Progressive Socialist Party former leader Walid Jumblat has described Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on the military developments in Gaza and south Lebanon as “very realistic.”

“He was very realistic in describing the plight of the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation of the past 75 years, in addition to the situation in Gaza and the bombardment of civilians,” Jumblat said in an interview with al-Jadeed television.