Ibrahim Aqil, who Israel said it killed in an air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs Friday, headed Hezbollah's elite Radwan unit and had been on a US sanctions list for nearly a decade.

The United States described Aqil as a "key leader" in the group and offered a $7 million reward for information about the man who became the second top Hezbollah commander killed in nearly a year of clashes between the militant group and Israel over the Gaza war.

US President Joe Biden said Friday he was working to allow people to return to their homes on the Israeli-Lebanon border, in his first comments since a wave of explosions targeting the Hezbollah militia sent tensions soaring.

Biden added that it was crucial to keep pushing for a Gaza ceasefire to underpin regional peace, despite a media report that his administration had given up hope of securing a truce before he leaves office in January.

It's around 3:30 in the afternoon on September 17. People in Lebanon are going about their daily business, doing the shopping, having a haircut, conducting meetings.

Hundreds of pagers across the country, and even outside its borders, then simultaneously bleep with a message and explode, wounding and killing their owners and also bystanders.

The communications devices were used by members of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which swiftly blamed Israel for the operation, as did several international media organisations.

With a floundering economy and growing restrictions on personal freedoms, 10 years of Huthi rule has left its mark on Yemen's ancient capital, Sanaa, where some quietly long for how things once were.

The Huthis, a radical political-military group from Yemen's northern mountains, have imposed strict rule over the large swathe of Yemen under their control, covering two-thirds of the population.

Footage of an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank showed a soldier pushing an apparently dead man off a rooftop, in what the army described Friday as a "serious incident".

AFPTV footage of the operation in the town of Qabatiyah, near Jenin, on Thursday showed an Israeli soldier using his foot to roll the body towards the edge of the roof and then pushing him over, while at least two other soldiers looked on.

Israeli warplanes pounded southern Lebanon Saturday, raising fears of all-out war a day after an Israeli strike on Beirut left senior Hezbollah commanders among the 37 people Lebanese officials reported killed.

Dozens of Israeli warplanes were "widely" striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon "to eliminate threats against the citizens of Israel," military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Two people from Taiwanese companies were questioned as part of a probe into pagers that exploded while being used by Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, investigators said Friday, as top officials insisted the devices were not from the island.

Questions and speculation have swirled over where the devices came from and how they were supplied to the militant group after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies detonated across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that an air strike killed four militants in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank.

Jenin is a bastion of Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, and has been a focus of large-scale Israeli military raids launched in late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have killed dozens.

"A short while ago, the (Israel Defense Forces) struck armed terrorists operating within a vehicle in the area of Qabatiya in Jenin, as part of a counterterrorism operation," the military said in a statement to AFP.

Some panic-stricken Lebanese have tossed power banks, or sleep with mobile phones in another room, after hand-held devices used by Hezbollah operatives detonated two days in a row, killing 37 people.

"What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It's terrifying," Lina Ismail told AFP by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek where some of the explosions occurred.

"We were so scared that we dismantled the inverter (a component inside solar energy systems) and turned off the device," she said.

A series of deadly explosions targeting Hezbollah members this week in Lebanon came only days after Israel announced plans to expand its war in Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its main backer Iran have blamed Israel for the blasts, but Israeli officials have neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

The explosions have raised the likelihood of full-scale war with Hezbollah, and experts interviewed by AFP offered insights on how that might unfold.

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