Live updates: Middle East crisis

An Israeli "aggression" was happening on Hasiya industrial city in Syria's Homs countryside, Syrian state TV said early on Thursday.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it intercepted a drone that approached Israel over the Red Sea but did not cross into Israeli territory, minutes after the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it targeted Israel's Eilat with drones.

Syrian state media reported an Israeli attack in central Homs province early Thursday, after an Israeli strike hit the country’s south the previous day.

"An Israeli attack" targeted an industrial area in the town of Hassia, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the city of Homs, state news agency SANA said, adding that "initial information" indicated the attack targeted a "car factory", reporting material damage.

A call by the US and France for a 21-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah "is still on the table," said the top UN official in Lebanon as she pushed for a way to enforce a UN Security Council resolution violated for years by both sides.

A UN peacekeeping mission is mandated by Security Council resolution 1701, adopted in 2006, to help the Lebanese army keep its southern border area with Israel free of weapons or armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.

That has sparked friction with Iran-backed Hezbollah, which effectively controls southern Lebanon. All parties are banned from crossing the Blue Line - a UN -mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

"We need a realistic roadmap for the implementation, by both sides, of resolution 1701. And this must include clear implementation and enforcement mechanisms," said UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

"At the end of the day, it is the lack or non-implementation of resolution 1701 over the past 18 years that led to today's harsh reality," she told reporters.

The Israeli army said its forces killed a Hezbollah figure inside Syria, as the military continues to target the group’s positions and fighters with a continuous air campaign.

Adham Jahout, is the group’s figure based in Syria, the army said in a statement.

It described Jahout as an intermediary who "relayed information from Syrian regime sources to the Hezbollah".

The army said the air raid struck in the area of Quneitra in southwestern Syria near the Israel-annexed Golan Heights.

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a call on Wednesday amid tensions with Iran.

The 30-minute call was the first known chat for Biden and Netanyahu since August and coincides with a sharp escalation of Israel's conflict with Iran and the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, but with no sign of an imminent ceasefire to end the conflict with Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.

The call was "direct and very productive," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, while acknowledging the two leaders have disagreements and are open about them.

Netanyahu has promised that arch-foe Iran will pay for its missile attack.

The US State Department warned that it would be unacceptable for Israel's military incursion in southern Lebanon to evolve into a situation similar to its invasion of the Gaza Strip.

"We cannot and must not see the situation in Lebanon turn into anything like the situation in Gaza. That would, of course, not be acceptable," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing when asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments on Tuesday.

"I'm making very clear that there should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza and leaves a result anything like Gaza."

Israeli police killed at least four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday, Palestinian health authorities and Israeli security forces said.

The Palestinian health ministry reported in a statement Wednesday that "four martyrs shot by the occupation in Nablus have been transferred to Rafidia Government Hospital".

It later said the men were aged between 31 and 43 years old.

The Palestinian Red Crescent also reported the deaths of four people, but Israeli security forces said five were killed Wednesday.

The US is working to get Americans out of Lebanon ahead of a potential Israeli attack, White House press spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.

The US embassy in Beirut remains open and can help Americans who need emergency passports or other documentation and the US will continue to make airplanes available as long as the Beirut airport remains open, Jean-Pierre said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant appeared on Wednesday to say that retaliation against Iran for its missile attack will be "lethal, precise and surprising," in a video published on Israeli media on Wednesday.

After describing Iran's October 1 missile attack as a failure, Gallant said: "Whoever attacks us will be hurt and will pay a price. Our attack will be deadly, precise and above all surprising, they will not understand what happened and how it happened, they will see the results," he said.