Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, said Wednesday that the group will respond to Tuesday's pager explosion attack with “special punishment."

The group is in a “new confrontation with the enemy," Safieddine said.

Israeli forces in the northern region are continuing their offensive and defensive exercises, the Israeli army said on Wednesday.

Free Patriotic Movement leader Jebran Bassil described the pager explosions that rocked Lebanon as “an attack on entire Lebanon, not on a party or a sect in it.”

Caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad said Wednesday that 12 people were killed after paging devices used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon a day earlier, adding that some wounded were treated in Syria.

"After checking with all the hospitals," the toll was revised to 12 dead, Abiad told a news conference, putting the number of wounded between 2,750 and 2,800.

European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell said Tuesday he would seek more information from Beirut, where he just traveled from, as he came before journalists just after news broke from Lebanon of several hundred people being wounded by pagers exploding, including members of Hezbollah.

Suspicion immediately fell on Israel, which earlier Tuesday stressed that halting Hezbollah's attacks on Israel's north to allow residents to return to their homes was now an official war goal.

Officials in Israel's defense establishment are now strenuously contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence that Israel maintain control of the narrow strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and warning that Netanyahu's reluctance to sign a cease-fire deal with Hamas is pushing Israel into a “potentially disastrous war with Hezbollah in Lebanon,” according to Israeli military and senior defense officials who spoke with ABC News.

The Israeli army said Tuesday that Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, has foiled an imminent “Hezbollah plot” to target a former security official with an explosive device.

Commissioner-General of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini met Tuesday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, in Beirut.

Lazzarini said he discussed with Berri the latest developments in the region including the war in Gaza, the "dramatic" situation in the West Bank, and the clashes in Lebanon.

The upcoming winter factor is what has pushed Israel’s political and military leaders to mull an imminent attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post has reported.

A U.S. official has told U.S. news portal Axios that "it would be crazy" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire an experienced minister of defense like Yoav Gallant amid a war in Gaza and as Israel might be heading towards a possible all out war in Lebanon.