In the latest exchanges during the conflict, the group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa, while Israel carried out air strikes in several areas of Lebanon.

A defiant Hezbollah "will not be defeated" in its war with Israel, the group's deputy chief Naim Qassem said in a speech.

"Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place" in Israel, "whether the centre, the north or the south," he said.

"I am telling the Israeli home front: the solution is a ceasefire," he added.

Iran, which supports Hezbollah, has in recent days engaged in diplomatic talks around establishing a ceasefire in Lebanon and war-battered Gaza amid growing fears of a broader regional conflict.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP that his country was ready to bolster its military presence in the south after any ceasefire, adding that Israeli troops were making brief cross-border incursions.

Security has been tightened in the country's only airport in Beirut "to remove any pretexts" for an Israeli attack, Mikati added.

Israel has also been intensifying its offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip, which the United Nations warned Tuesday is suffering under its worst aid restrictions since the war there began over a year ago.

'Violent night'
 

Israel's military launched several strikes in Lebanon on Tuesday, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon's official National News Agency reported.

"It was a violent night in Baalbek, we have not witnessed a similar one since" the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, 50-year-old resident Nidal al-Solh told AFP.

An Israeli strike on the northern, Christian-majority village of Aito on Monday is believed to have killed 22 people, including 12 women and two children, according to the UN.

The UN rights office called for a "prompt, independent and thorough investigation" of the strike.

At least 1,315 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel last month escalated its bombing there, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

The war in Lebanon has displaced at least 690,000 people, mostly on the Lebanese side of the boder, according to verified figures last week from the International Organization for Migration.