Hezbollah’s strikes overnight hit towns further south in Israel than in any attack since the current conflict between Israel and the Iranian-backed militia began on 8 October.

Coupled with Israeli attacks in Beirut, it means the current phase of the conflict has spilled out of the border region to which it has been largely confined in recent months.

Cross-border fighting escalated a day after Gaza-based Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza. Hezbollah is allied with Hamas.

Hezbollah has maintained thousands of fighters and a large missile arsenal in southern Lebanon, along the border with Israel, since Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

The militia was established in the early 1980s to oppose Israel and is backed by the region's most dominant Shia power, Iran. The group has grown into a political force and has participated in national elections since 1992.

Image source, Israeli government

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will take "whatever action is necessary to restore security" and return people safely to their homes along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Addressing the escalating conflict with Hezbollah in a video statement on X, Netanyahu said the Iran-backed group had attacked Israel "completely unprovoked" since 8 October, forcing 60,000 Israelis to leave their homes along the border.

"In the subsequent months, they haven't stopped for a single day attacking us," he continued.

"No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities. We can't accept it either."

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

Mojtaba Amani, Iran's ambassador to Lebanon, says he is “doing good" after being injured during the first wave of pager explosions last Tuesday in Beirut.

In a post on X, he thanks Lebanese and Iranian doctors for treating his injuries. It is not clear if he personally posted the message but this his first communication since the blast.

Multiple reports suggested he may have lost an eye and sustained severe injuries to the other when a pager he was carrying exploded.

These reports were denied by Iran’s embassy in Beirut, which did acknowledge that he suffered an injury to his hand that will require multiple sessions of treatment. They also said he is expected to regain his sight.

Two short videos posted on social media last Tuesday showed Amani getting out of a car with his face covered by a white cloth covered in blood, with injuries to one of his hands.

Questions have been raised over why Iran’s ambassador was using a pager that had been imported for use by Hezbollah members.

Lebanon's health ministry says three people have been killed in Israeli strikes in three different towns.

Separately, Hezbollah announced on Sunday that two of its fighters had died. It isn't clear if the two fighters are included in the Lebanese health ministry's death toll.

Image source, Rambam Hospital

Rambam Hospital in the city of Haifa, northern Israel, is relocating patients to a secure underground parking facility until further notice after Hezbollah missiles reached the city in the early hours.

A video and photo released by the hospital shows staff wheeling patients in hospital beds through the car park.

All hospitals in northern Israel are now operating within designated safe areas, the health ministry said.

If you're just joining our live coverage, here's what has unfolded in recent hours:

• Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensified overnight, with both sides carrying out large-scale strikes across the Lebanon border
• Hezbollah launched 150 missiles into Israel, with the Israeli military saying that most of them had been intercepted
• Some residential buildings in the northern city of Haifa were hit, igniting fires and causing some injuries
• The Hezbollah strikes reached further south in Israel than any since the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began on 8 October 2023
• Israel carried out air strikes on targets in southern Lebanon and said it had destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it had joinedthe overnight attack, launching multiple drones and missiles at Israel from Iraq
• A UN official has warned the region is "on the brink of imminent catastrophe", as fears of an all out war mount

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

Hezbollah used used Fadi 1 medium range missiles, which is a copy of the Iranian Kheibar missile, in its attack overnight. They are mainly manufactured in Syria in facilities supervised by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Israel carried out a raid against one of these facilities in Masyaf, Syria.

Hezbollah also used Fadi 2 missiles, which appeared in the group’s propaganda video of its tunnel facility Imad 4 almost a month ago. The video sparked speculation about whether this sophisticated, well-made tunnel is really under the Lebanese mountains or elsewhere in the region.

Last month, Hezbollah fired around 300 Katyusha rockets towards Israel after the assassination of its high rank commander Fuad Shukr in July. That was seen as a “weak response” among some of the group's supporters.

Hezbollah says this latest attack was the “initial revenge” for the pager explosions.

It means another should be expected for the high rank commanders killed in the Beirut strike on Friday. Their funeral is being held today.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

Image source, BBC News

Last night in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut, we saw a group of young Hezbollah members bring a large banner to hang over the street where Israel bombed and killed at least 16 of the group’s elite force commanders.

A poem promising revenge was written on it in Arabic.

But after two waves of pager and walkie talkie explosions -which left more than 3000 people, many of them Hezbollah fighters, with permanent injuries - and the Dahieh strike, many were wondering if the group is still capable of doing anything.

I hear now from my sources that Hezbollah wanted to deliver multiple messages with this attack.

It apparently wanted to show that there are others in the group that can continue to carry out operations.

Image source, EPA

The death toll from Friday's attack on a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut has risen to 45, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

The IDF says it killed several senior figures belonging to the armed group in a strike on a building in the south of the capital.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

The fear in Lebanon is that, no matter what Hezbollah does, Israel is planning a wider offensive against the group.

Hezbollah, for its part, has repeatedly indicated it does not want to trigger a war, despite the successive blows.

Iran, the group’s main supporter, is not interested in a major conflict either.

Hezbollah is the main player in the so-called Axis of Resistance, an alliance of factions across the Middle East supported by Iran, and for Tehran it is vital to have a strong Hezbollah next to Israel’s borders.

As Hezbollah attacked, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed to have fired cruise missiles and drones at Israel, a sign that any potential conflict is unlikely to remain contained to the Lebanon-Israel border.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) says it joined Hezbollah's overnight attack, launching drones and missiles at Israel from Iraq.

In a series of statements, the Iraqi-based militia claimed it had launched two separate attacks on unspecified locations in Israel, including attacking "targets in the north of Israel at dawn with Al-Arqab developed cruise missiles".

A further statement on Sunday morning claimed the group struck at a "vital target" in Israel using drones, according to Arabic language specialists at BBC Monitoring.

Earlier an IDF spokesman told reporters that there were two attempts to hit Israel overnight from Iraq.

In further public statements, the IDF said projectiles fired from an unspecified country to the east had been intercepted and caused no damage or casualties.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

Sunday’s attacks by Israel and Hezbollah - with the group’s rockets flying deeper into Israel and the Israeli military carrying out intense strikes in Lebanon - come after a major escalation in their near year-long conflict that had been largely contained to border areas.

In Lebanon, the war has now been felt across the country, and civilians, Hezbollah supporters or not, have been caught up in the violence.

First, by pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded in an attack widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has not commented. Then, on Friday, a residential building in Beirut’s densely populated Dahieh district, a Hezbollah stronghold, was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, as senior military members of the group gathered underground. Children and women were among those killed.

Hezbollah, however, remains defiant. Yesterday, one supporter told me that the recent Israeli attacks were part of a strategy to provoke the group to give a strong response and spark a war, a view shared by many here.

Smoke was seen rising over the northern Israeli city of Haifa following a wave of strikes launched from Lebanon on Sunday morning.

Some residential buildings were set alight and residents injured. Rescue teams arrived at the scene to treat the wounded, while Israeli security forces cordoned off the area.

The city is further south than previous Hezbollah rocket attacks have managed to reach.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Israel has ordered all schools in the country's north to shut until Monday evening at the earliest.

Gatherings were also restricted in many northern areas of the country and parts of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, with no more than 10 people allowed to gather outdoors and 100 people indoors.

Beaches will also be closed to the public.

The Israeli health ministry also says that hospitals in northern Israel have been instructed to only operate in secure areas.

The Rambam Hospital in the city of Haifa has transferred operations to an underground car park.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

The attacks from Hezbollah come after major blows for the group, including an Israeli strike in Beirut that decimated the chain of command of its elite fighting unit.

Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel, as rockets flew deeper into the country’s territory.

Hezbollah said one of its targets was an Israeli military production facility in the city of Haifa, and that this was an initial retaliation for the explosions targeting the group’s communication devices.

In response, the Israeli army said it was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and that its attacks would continue and intensify.

This comes amid growing speculation that Israel is preparing a wider offensive against the Iranian-backed group.

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, reporting from Jerusalem

With Israeli jets attacking hundreds of targets across southern Lebanon, including what it says are thousands of rocket launcher barrels, Hezbollah is firing back, doing its best to demonstrate that it’s still a formidable opponent.

This morning, sirens sounded over large parts of northern Israel, and more than a hundred rockets were fired across the border.

The army said some were intercepted, but there have been reports of Hezbollah rockets landing much further into Israel than before, close to the port city of Haifa and further east in the Galilee.

Houses have been hit and people injured. Hezbollah said it had attacked an Israeli defence technology company and an airbase.

Last night, the authorities ordered schools in the north to close and restricted public gatherings in many areas.

In the far south of the country, Israel said what it called a suspicious aerial target had been intercepted - suggesting that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen may have been involved in the latest attacks.

The army said projectiles launched from Iraq had also been brought down.

Image source, EPA

If you're just joining today's live coverage, here's what we know so far about the clashes overnight.

• A barrage of rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanon overnight, landing much deeper into Israel than in previous attacks
• Hezbollah says it targeted industrial and military sites, and dozens of homes were reportedly damaged

• The IDF says most of the rockets were intercepted by air defence systems
• Footage appeared to show a fire in a residential area near Haifa in northern Israel after it was hit by a rocket. There have not been any reports of fatalities
• Early on Sunday, Israel closed schools and restricted gatherings in many northern areas of the country and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
• Meanwhile, Israel said it struck scores of Hezbollah targets on Saturday, including thousands of rocket launcher barrels

Jeanine Hennis, the UN's special coordinator for Lebanon, has issued a warning to both Israel and Hezbollah after last night's clashes.

She said: “With the region on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, it cannot be overstated enough: there is NO military solution that will make either side safer.”

Sean Seddon
BBC News

We are resuming our live coverage of the situation in the Middle East.

The UN has warned of "imminent catastrophe" this morning after Israel and Hezbollah launched more attacks over the border.

The Iran-backed group fired hundreds of rockets from Lebanon into Israel, with some evading air defences and damaging homes.

Some injuries have been reported.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has carried out air strikes. It said it was targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers.

Fears of an all-out conflict between the two sides are growing. We will be bringing you all the latest updates and analysis throughout the day here.

Image source, Reuters

Here's a look at today's main developments:

• Cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel have resumed. Hezbollah says it has fired rockets at two military positions in northern Israel, while the IDF said it was attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon
• The number of people killed in the Israeli strike on Beirut on Friday has risen to 37, the Lebanese health ministry says, as search and rescue efforts in Dahieh continue
• The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it killed 16 Hezbollah members in the strike, including 12 senior commanders

• A news conference by Lebanon's health ministry revealed this morning that 152 people are still in a critical condition after the device explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday. It also said the number of those killed over the two days of explosions has risen from 37 to 39
• Away from Lebanon in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says at least 22 people, "mostly" children and women, have been killed following a strike on a school in Gaza city housing displaced people

We'll be pausing our coverage of the conflict shortly, but we'll be keeping our main story on the Hezbollah-Israel attacks updated.

This page was edited by Sophie Abdulla and Adam Durbin. It was written by Lana Lam, Rachel Flynn, with reporting from Nafiseh Kohnavard and Hugo Bachega in Beirut, and Daniel De Simone in Jerusalem.