At least two people were wounded by shrapnel during a Hezbollah rocket barrage on the northern coastal city of Nahariya on Monday night, while international efforts to secure a truce between the Iran-backed terror group and Israel appeared to near completion.

With concerns high over the possibility that fighting could ramp up as a ceasefire deal nears, the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command issued new restrictions in several areas of northern Israel.

At the same time, Israeli jets kept up attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the terror group’s strongholds in the capital Beirut.

The IDF said Monday evening it was putting communities across the Golan Heights and along the northern frontier under “limited activity” rules, tightening them from “partial activity.”

The restrictions bar most schools from opening and also forbid large gatherings in the area.

While near the restive borders with Lebanon and Syria, the Golan Heights has largely been spared the brunt of rocket fire on northern Israel, though a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Golan town of Majdal Shams in late July killed 12 children.

The changes reflected fears in Israel that Hezbollah will ramp up rocket attacks before a ceasefire comes into effect, as the sides seek to maximize gains before laying down arms.

Israel’s high-level security cabinet was slated to convene later Tuesday to decide on whether to sign off on a 60-day ceasefire halting long-running hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which flared into all-out war in late September.

Throughout Monday evening rocket warning sirens blared in Israeli communities near the Lebanon border and the Galilee region as rockets arched over from Lebanon and into Israel.

One barrage of 10 rockets targeted the coastal city of Nahariya and nearby areas, some of which were knocked down, though others impacted in inhabited areas.

A 70-year-old woman was hospitalized in serious condition following the rocket volley, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. A man in his 80s was also lightly hurt in the attack.

Several others were treated for acute anxiety.

Early Tuesday morning the IDF said it downed a drone that crossed into the Golan Heights “from the east,” referring to Iraq, where Iran-backed terror groups have launched attacks on Israel from.

In Lebanon, the health ministry said Israeli strikes killed at least 31 people across the war-battered country on Monday, most of them in the south.

A ministry statement listed “the casualty toll of Israeli enemy strikes on a number of Lebanese cities and towns” in Lebanon’s east, south, and near Beirut, with most of them killed in the south and four killed in the east.

Figures from Lebanese authorities do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The IDF said fighter jets struck 25 sites belonging to the Hezbollah executive council, in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh, the northeastern city of Baalbek, the Beqaa Valley, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the outskirts of the Lebanese capital.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli strikes on Tyre and Nabatiyeh after Israel issued evacuation warnings for parts of the main southern cities.

NNA also reported “a drone strike that targeted a residential complex” in a Druze-majority town on the outskirts of Beirut, without prior evacuation calls.

Lebanon’s Druze community follows an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and its heartland around Mount Lebanon has largely been spared in the current hostilities.

The Lebanese education ministry suspended classes in schools, technical institutes, and private higher education institutions in Beirut and a number of surrounding areas, citing “the current dangerous conditions.” The ministry has taken similar measures in the past during the fighting.

Also, the IDF confirmed launching evening airstrikes on the Syria-Lebanon border, targeting what it said were routes used by Hezbollah to smuggle Iranian weapons.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said the strikes damaged several bridges in the Al-Qusayr area, and wounded two people.

The Israeli military said the strikes were part of efforts against Hezbollah’s Unit 4400, which is tasked with delivering weapons from Iran and its proxies to Lebanon, via Syria and Iraq.

Israel has carried out airstrikes on Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah via Syria since at least 2013, according to foreign sources and occassional details released by military officials.

Israel and Hezbollah last fought a direct war in 2006, but the fragile ceasefire that held calm along the Israel-Lebanon border began to fray on October 8, 2023, as Hezbollah began firing rockets over the border in support of allied terror group Hamas.

Tens of thousands of northern residents have been displaced since due to the attacks and fears that the Shiite terror group would launch a similar invasion to that of Hamas, which slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 251 on October 7.

Israel stepped up its offensive on Hezbollah in Lebanon in late September, launching extensive strikes and operations that took out most of the group’s leadership, including its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel also launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon with the aim of clearing Hezbollah strongholds in the area and making it safe for evacuated residents of northern Israel to return to their homes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene ministers in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening to approve a 60-day ceasefire with Hezbollah terror group, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Monday.

At the same time, the official stressed that Israel was accepting a cessation of hostilities, not an end to the war on Hezbollah.

“We don’t know how long it will last,” the official said of the ceasefire. “It could be a month, it could be a year.”

Lebanese sources told Reuters on Monday that US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron were expected to announce a ceasefire imminently.

In Washington, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, “We’re close,” but “nothing is done until everything is done.”