Cattle farmer Khairallah Yaacoub refused to leave south Lebanon despite a year of Hezbollah-Israel clashes. When full-scale war erupted, he and four others were stranded in their ruined border village.

Yaacoub is among a handful of villagers in the war-battered south who have tried to stay put despite the Israeli onslaught.

He finally fled Hula village only after being wounded by shrapnel and losing half of his 16-strong herd to Israeli strikes.

More than a month into its war with Israel, Hezbollah says it is ready for a truce, but there are limits to what it can accept after suffering devastating attacks, analysts say.

The Iran-backed group said Wednesday it would accept a ceasefire, if offered and if the terms were "suitable", acknowledging it had been dealt "painful" blows by Israel.

Also Wednesday, Lebanon's premier Najib Mikati said he had received signals from US envoy Amos Hochstein that a truce could be reached before the US elections on November 5.

A French university has severed ties with an Israeli higher education institution accusing it of "warmongering" stances over the Gaza war, French media has reported, sparking criticism from Paris.

The move comes after students at several French universities have, like some of their peers in the United States, protested or held sit-ins demanding a ceasefire in Gaza over the past year.

The Political Studies Institute in the eastern city of Strasbourg cut ties with the Reichman University near Tel Aviv in June, local newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace reported on Wednesday.

Strikes hit near east Lebanon's main city of Baalbek and close to the southern city of Tyre on Thursday, state media said, after Israel issued evacuation calls for both areas.

The air strikes came as Lebanon's prime minister condemned Israel for issuing evacuation warnings for entire areas and called for diplomatic pressure for a halt to its strikes more than a month into the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met visiting US officials Thursday to discuss a possible deal to end Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the death toll mounted on both sides of the border.

Netanyahu told Washington envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk that any Lebanon deal must guarantee Israel's longer term scrutiny.

UN food agencies warned Thursday of deadly hunger levels in 16 "hunger hotspots" in coming months, with the Palestinian territories, Sudan and South Sudan, Mali and Haiti of most concern.

Conflict is driving most of the acute food insecurity in all those areas analysed by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme.

Lebanon's prime minister said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5.

"The call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth" of November, Najib Mikati said in a televised interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.

Hochstein was heading to Israel on Wednesday to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The discovery of a 4,000-year-old fortified town hidden in an oasis in modern-day Saudi Arabia reveals how life at the time was slowly changing from a nomadic to an urban existence, archaeologists said on Wednesday.

The remains of the town, dubbed al-Natah, were long concealed by the walled oasis of Khaybar, a green and fertile speck surrounded by desert in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula.

Then an ancient 14.5 kilometre-long wall was discovered at the site, according to research led by French archaeologist Guillaume Charloux published earlier this year.

For weeks, Fatima Zayyoun has tended to her daughter Ivana, whose bandaged fragile body is in a Beirut hospital after an Israeli strike near their home engulfed her in flames.

At the Lebanese Hospital Geitaoui, home to the country's only burns unit, 35-year-old Zayyoun is still in shock, five weeks after a third of her daughter's body was burned in a September 23 strike on south Lebanon.

Ivana, who will turn two next month, lies nearby, her arms, legs, head and face all swathed in bandages.

Hezbollah's new leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.

Qassem, who was named Hezbollah secretary-general on Tuesday, did not explicitly link a Lebanon ceasefire to an end to fighting in Gaza, a position previously held by the Iran-backed group.