U.S. President Donald Trump said overnight that he hopes Hezbollah "acts nicely and well during this important period of time," shortly after he announced a ten-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel.

A 10-day ceasefire agreement came after a meeting between Israel's and Lebanon’s ambassadors in Washington and a flurry of subsequent phone calls from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to a White House official.

They were the first direct diplomatic talks between the two countries in decades. Hezbollah had opposed direct talks between Lebanon and Israel.

Senior Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah praised Friday Iran as he spoke to reporters in the battered Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik.

“Yesterday, before the ceasefire, Hezbollah’s leadership was formally informed around 4am from the Iranian ambassador that there will be a ceasefire at night,” he said. “We were informed from the Islamic Republic that the calls they took with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were encouraging and facilitating for a ceasefire as first step.”

Tilak Pokharel, a spokesperson for the U.S. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL, said peacekeepers have not observed any airstrikes since midnight, when a 10-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.

He said, however, that they had observed “artillery shelling in several areas in south Lebanon” up until 6 a.m. and “continue to observe IDF airspace violation in their area of operations,” referring to the Israeli military.

President Joseph Aoun said on Friday that direct negotiations with Israel were crucial, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel and an upcoming meeting between their leaders.

"Direct negotiations are crucial... and a ceasefire is the gateway to proceeding with negotiations," Aoun said in a statement shared by the presidency, reiterating that Beirut's goal was to "consolidate a ceasefire, secure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the occupied southern territories, recover prisoners, and address outstanding border disputes".

Moscow on Friday backed the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon and said it hoped the pause in fighting could pave the way for a longer-term agreement, as the fragile 10-day truce took hold.

"We certainly welcome the decision on a truce and hope that in these few days it will indeed be possible to reach agreements that will prevent a repeat of the military clashes," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, in response to a question by AFP.

Israel's defense minister said on Friday that the campaign against the militant group Hezbollah was not yet complete, just hours after a 10-day ceasefire came into force in Lebanon.

"The ground maneuver into Lebanon and the strikes on Hezbollah have achieved many gains, but they are still not complete," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a broadcast statement.

Israeli strikes on Tyre in southern Lebanon killed at least 13 people just before the 10-day ceasefire with Israel took effect at midnight, a city official said on Friday.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said another 35 people were injured, and emergency workers were still searching the rubble for another "15 missing".

A fragile calm settled over parts of Lebanon on Friday as a 10-day ceasefire brokered by the United States took hold between Israel and Hezbollah, prompting thousands of displaced families to begin the journey home — even as uncertainty, destruction and Israeli warnings against going back to parts of southern Lebanon clouded their return.

By early morning, cars were backed up for kilometers on the route leading south to the damaged Qasmiyeh bridge over the Litani River, a key crossing linking the southern coastal city of Tyre to the north. Vehicles piled high with mattresses, suitcases and salvaged belongings crept forward through a single reopened lane, hastily repaired after an Israeli airstrike just a day earlier.

Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, told a diplomacy conference Friday that the “brilliance” of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in Lebanon was that it ended “senseless killing.”

“The brilliance of what happened yesterday is it stopped senseless killing and President Trump and Secretary Rubio stepping in strongly and saying we need a time out,” Barrack said at the conference in Antalya, southern Turkey.