Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah were further inflamed this week by the killing of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut.

“I am here when we are seeing a worrying intensification of exchange of fire across the blue line in the border between Lebanon and Israel,” Borrell said at a news conference in Beirut on Saturday, speaking alongside Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib.

“It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East.”

Borrell also added the entire international community needs to work toward “change in the Middle East”, noting that “we cannot continue with the deplorable, awful track record of the last year or the last decade” in the region.

Bou Habib also spoke at the news conference, telling reporters that he “strongly reaffirm(s) that peace for Lebanon is essential and that all Lebanese (people) are attached to peace”.

“The Lebanese government is actively seeking to de-escalate” the situation at the border, he continued.

Borrell will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, he stated at Saturday’s news conference, where he will be discussing “concrete steps that could galvanize a serious international peace effort”.

“Nobody will win from a regional conflict,” he added, referencing growing fears that the Israel-Hamas war could spill into a wider conflict involving Iranian proxy groups like Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati has also warned that any escalation in southern Lebanon will lead to a “comprehensive explosion” in the region, as exchanges of fire between the Hezbollah resistance movement and Israel continue.

Mikati made the remarks in a meeting with Borrell on Saturday, hours after Hezbollah announced it had hit an Israeli aerial surveillance base with scores of missiles in its first response to Tel Aviv’s assassination of a deputy political leader of Hamas.

Mikati went on to say that “Lebanon’s commitment to implementing UN resolution number 1701 requires stopping Israel’s violations of our sovereignty and its withdrawal from our occupied territories”.

“The full implementation of this resolution requires first stopping Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty and withdrawing from the Lebanese territories it still occupies,” he added.

The Lebanese premier further called for “a comprehensive solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by giving the Palestinians their just rights.

The southern Lebanese border has seen regular exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah since Tel Aviv launched its ferocious invasion of Gaza in early October.

Nearly three months of cross-border fire have killed 175 people in Lebanon, including three journalists.

In northern occupied territories, at least 13 Israelis, including nine soldiers, have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

The assassination of Hamas’ Deputy Chief Saleh Al-Arouri by the Israeli regime in southern Beirut on Tuesday has raised fears of further escalation.

Arouri, 57, was one of the founders of the Qassam Brigades before taking on a political portfolio in recent years.

He was seen as a key player in the movement, masterminding its operations in the West Bank from exile in Syria, Turkey, Qatar, and finally Lebanon after long stints in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli regime waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

The relentless military campaign has killed over 22,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured around 57,910 others.

“At 08:10 AM on Saturday, January 6, 2024, the fighters of the Islamic Resistance targeted the Meron Aerial Surveillance Base with 62 missiles of various types, inflicting direct and confirmed hits,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The movement described the operation “as a preliminary response” to the Israeli assassination of “great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri and his martyr brothers” in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh.

According to the statement, the base is the sole center for administration, surveillance, and air control in the northern occupied territories.

“It is one of two principal bases in the entire usurping entity, the other being Mitzpe Ramon in the south,” it added.

Earlier, sirens were sounded in northern Israeli cities, warning residents of incoming rockets, media reports said Saturday.

On Friday, the leader of Hezbollah stressed that all of Lebanon will be exposed if the group does not react to the assassination of al-Arouri in Beirut.

Speaking in a televised address for the second time in less than a week, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah reaffirmed that Hezbollah “cannot be silent about a violation of this level”.

“This means that all of Lebanon will become exposed, all cities, villages, and figures will become exposed,” he said on Friday, adding, “The murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go without reaction and punishment.”

Al-Arouri was killed in an alleged Israeli attack on a southern suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, a stronghold of Hezbollah.

Nasrallah’s comments come as Lebanon filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over the assassination of al-Arouri, calling it the “most dangerous phase” of Israeli attacks on the country.

This is not the first time that Nasrallah promised retaliation. He had on Wednesday warned Israel against expanding its war, saying there would be “no ceilings” and “no rules” to his group’s fighting if Israel chose to launch a war on Lebanon.

“Whoever thinks of war with us – in one word, he will regret it,” Nasrallah continued.

Nasrallah added al-Arouri’s killing “will not go unanswered or unpunished”, and that Hezbollah fighters will use the “right place and the right time, and the field will respond”.

“We have full knowledge of where Israeli military positions are,” and the Israelis “aren’t revealing the true number of their casualties, and the destruction of their equipment”, he stressed.

Since October 8, the day after the Israel onslaught against Gaza started, the frontier between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied territories has seen deadly exchanges of fire, mainly between the Israeli army and the Hezbollah movement.

Reports say Israel has repeatedly used US-supplied internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in its attacks on Lebanon.

The fighting has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands from the northern part of the Israeli-occupied territories, which have been pummeled by rocket fire and shelling carried out by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian groups.

Nearly 150 Hezbollah fighters have lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict, while some 11 Israeli soldiers have also been killed.

Hezbollah has already fought off two Israeli wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, forcing a humiliating retreat upon the Tel Aviv regime’s military in both cases.

The resistance movement has vowed to resolutely defend Lebanon in case of any Israeli-imposed war.