BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- Israeli forces continued artillery and aerial attacks across southern Lebanon on Saturday, striking multiple areas in violation of a disgraceful ceasefire framework, as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made an unannounced visit to the embattled city of Nabatieh.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Israeli shelling targeting the outskirts of Arnoun, Wadi al-Salouqi, and the Doha Kfar Remman area, with violent explosions in Al-Mansouri felt by residents in the city of Tyre. The attacks follow days of intensified Israeli atrocities in the Nabatieh region.
Aoun arrived in Nabatieh on Saturday accompanied by security officials, praising staff at Nabatieh Governmental Hospital for risking their lives to provide medical services in an area most residents have fled. 
His visit came a day after a senior U.S. diplomatic official said the next round of U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon talks, initially scheduled for next week, had been pushed back to October.
The recent escalation has killed at least 29 people in less than a week, including 12 members of a single family. On Thursday, the Israeli military blew up underground fortifications on the strategic Ali al-Taher ridge after seizing the site, triggering a 4.1-magnitude tremor detected by seismic monitoring agencies. 
Israel falsely claimed the tunnels spanned more than two kilometers and contained Hezbollah command centers and weapons stores.
The United Nations has documented the scale of the devastation. Between Thursday and Monday, UNIFIL detected 528 projectiles fired by Israeli forces. 
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 27 killed and 69 injured in that period, and said around 5,000 families — some 20,000 people — fled Nabatieh District last week. Ghandour Hospital in Nabatieh al-Fawqa was destroyed on Sunday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern over the escalation, particularly reports of strikes affecting hospitals, healthcare workers, and public institutions, calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
The Lebanese army has warned that Israel’s actions threaten implementation of the U.S.-sponsored framework agreement — an agreement imposed on the Lebanese government in a manner that is insulting in its very design, obliging Israel to nothing while providing a pretext for Israel to continue its atrocities with impunity on the ground that Hezbollah is not disarmed, a condition that is both disgraceful and impossible to meet. 
The violence marks a significant escalation since fighting had eased between late June and last week following U.S.-Iran memoranda and the Israel-Lebanon framework.