Amnesty International accused Israel on Thursday of "misleading" and sometimes inadequate calls for residents to evacuate parts of the country, expressing concern the warnings intend to massively uproot southerners.

Since September 23, Israel has launched an intense air campaign that has killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.

Italy's defense minister Thursday said firing at the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and other incidents the force blames on Israel "could constitute war crimes".

"The hostile acts committed and repeated by Israeli forces against the base... could constitute war crimes," defense minister Guido Crosetto told a press conference, adding that Italy has asked for an official explanation "because it was not a mistake".

The Lebanese government said it was mulling establishing at least two pre-fabricated "villages" to help shelter some of the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by intense Israeli bombing.

Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who heads the government's disaster management unit, said a "working paper" outlined options for shelters, including "setting up ready-made homes on some open, public land".

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Thursday two of its members were wounded when its positions came under fire in the country’s south, where Israel and Hezbollah are fighting.

Esmail Qaani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, is alive and unhurt but under guard and being questioned as Iran investigates major security breaches, multiple sources have told the Middle East Eye news portal.

Hezbollah said it destroyed an Israeli tank advancing on Lebanon's southern border on Thursday.

The group fired rockets at "an Israeli tank as it advanced towards Ras al-Naqoura, leading to its burning and destruction," it said, claiming casualties.

Israel's representative to the U.N. Security Council, Gilad Erdan, has said that Israel has "no desire to remain in Lebanon and the forces capable of doing so are the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL.”

An Israeli freelance journalist who was arrested in Lebanon in recent days after entering the country with a foreign passport has been freed and deported to the United States, Israeli media reports said on Thursday.

Joshua Tartakovsky, a 42-year-old Israeli citizen born in the United States, had reportedly entered Lebanon on a British passport with a group of other journalists some time over the past two weeks.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati revealed Thursday that "diplomatic contacts intensified over the past hours, ahead of the U.N. Security Council session, with the aim of seeking a ceasefire again and thus exerting more pressure to stop the Israeli aggression on Lebanon."

"There are contacts taking place between the United States and France, which had requested the Security Council meeting, with the aim of reviving the ceasefire declaration for a specific period of time in order to resume the search for political solutions," Mikati told his visitors.

Israel's military chief Herzi Halevi has vowed to keep targeting Hezbollah, saying strikes would continue "without respite" to prevent the group from recovering.

"We will continue to strike Hezbollah with intensity, without allowing them any respite or recovery," Halevi said in a statement.