Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Lebanon's prime minister has called on the international community to "take a clear position" on what he calls "these horrific massacres" in a statement published this afternoon.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati says he had intended to travel to New York to participate at the UN's General Assembly, but decided not to travel after this week's developments.

"I reiterate that there is no priority at the present time that is higher than stopping the massacres committed by the Israeli enemy and the various types of wars it is waging," the statement reads.

"I also call on the international community and the human conscience to take a clear position on these horrific massacres."

Mikati also calls for the "adoption of international laws to neutralize civilian technological means from military and war targets" in the wake of the pager and walkie-talkie attacks.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have issued an update on the cross-border fire that has taken place today.

It says about "180 targets and thousands of launcher barrels" have been destroyed following a series of strikes in southern Lebanon this afternoon.

In a post on Telegram, the IDF adds it also identified about 90 rockets fired from Lebanon into its territory.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

We are near the site hit in Dahieh, a southern suburb of Beirut. Access for the media is limited, yet there are lots of news teams here on the ground.

A young Hezbollah coordinator says soon, a group of us will be taken to the location hit.

He says: "You are only allowed filming there and straight angle when we are walking. Don’t go left or right. Don’t film any other buildings.”

He says for both our and their safety, we should follow the instruction, and will have 10 minutes there.

We walk there as a crowded group.

At the attack site, a bulldozer is removing the rubble from a deep ditch that the Israeli air strike has created. All other buildings around have damage. Cars smashed.

There are still people under the rubble.

We are asked to stop filming. They found a body.

Near the attack site, many families are waiting. Some women are crying. All wearing black as a sign of mourning.

People are shocked here. Some are questioning why many Hezbollah high-rank commanders were gathering in the location that it is not too far from where Fuad Shukr, the group’s top commander, was killed in another Israeli airstrike on 30 July.

I hear from my sources that as their communication ways were damaged due to the pager and walkie-talkie explosions, they decided to meet in person.

Olivia Le Poidevin, a journalist at L'Orient Today in Beirut, has spoken to BBC Radio 5 Live.

She says Hezbollah are "in a corner in terms of how to respond". The Lebanese population "absolutely do not want to be dragged into a war," Olivia says.

"This right now really is a living definition of a nightmare for Beirut," she adds.

"This is no longer a conflict assigned to the south, it does feel like it’s happening everywhere, which is why people are concerned and frankly scared," she tells the programme.

Germany's foreign ministry says "concrete steps" on how to de-escalate growing tensions across the Middle East are urgently needed.

In a post on X, external, the ministry says: "Once again, the entire region is holding its breath.

"We urgently need concrete steps in the Middle East to de-escalate and avoid further civilian casualties."

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has been in contact with her counterparts in Israel and Lebanon about necessary next steps, the post adds.

More now on Gaza - where the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says at least 22 people, "mostly" children and women, have been killed following a strike on a school in Gaza City - with at least 30 others injured.

The closed school was housing displaced people, the health ministry said.

Reuters footage from the site showed blasted walls, wrecked and burnt furniture, and holes in the ceiling of one room.

"The women and their children were sitting in the playground of the school, the kids were playing, and suddenly two rockets hit them," one witness, Said Al-Malahi, told Reuters.

Also on Saturday, the health ministry said that four of its workers were killed and six injured in an Israeli "targeting" of a health ministry warehouse in the Musabah area of southern Gaza. The ministry did not specify whether the incident was an air strike.

Image source, Reuters

Search and rescue teams are continuing their work at the scene of yesterday's strike on the Beirut suburb of Dahieh.

Excavators have been brought in to help clear the debris as medical staff survey the scene, surrounded by the rubble of damaged buildings.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, EPA

The Israeli military has issued an update on yesterday's strike in southern Lebanon, saying it has killed a dozen senior commanders in Hezbollah's elite Radwan force.

In what it describes as a "precise strike", the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it killed Ibrahim Aqil - head of operations and Radwan commander - and 15 other Hezbollah members.

The group had been meeting in Dahieh, a known stronghold of the Iran-backed group in the Lebanese capital, the IDF adds.

In a separate post on X, an IDF spokesperson adds that 12 of those killed in the Beirut strike were senior members of the Iran-backed group at the "top of Hezbollah's leadership".

We've just received an update from Lebanon's health ministry, who say 37 people have been confirmed killed in yesterday's Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

Lebanese officials also say rubble from the site in Dahieh is still being cleared.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters

We have more information now from Lebanon's health ministry's news conference.

A little earlier, we reported that health minister Firass Abiad said the number of people killed in an Israeli attack on Beirut on Friday has risen to 31.

Three of those killed were children aged six, four and 10. Seven women were also killed, as well as three Syrian nationals. Two people injured in the strike are in a critical condition of the 15 still being treated in hospital, the health minister confirmed.

The minister said search operations at the site of the strike were still ongoing.

From the device explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday, 152 people are still in a critical condition and 777 more being treated in hospital for their wounds, Abiad said.

The number of those killed over the two days of explosions has risen to 39. 12 people were killed in Tuesday's attack, and the number of those killed on Wednesday is up to 27, he added.

Hezbollah says it has fired rockets at two military positions in northern Israel, according to the AFP news agency.

In separate statements, according to AFP, the Iran-backed group says it fired "a salvo of Katyusha rockets" each at two Israeli barracks.

AFP also says its correspondents reported heavy Israeli strikes in several areas of south Lebanon.

Reuters news agency has released images appearing to show smoke rising above Jabal Al Rihan in southern Lebanon - near the border with Israel.

A short time ago, we reported on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saying it was attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

We will bring you any developments, as and when we get them.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Daniel De Simone
Reporting from Jerusalem

After a week of deepening conflict, there’s speculation here – and throughout the region – about what might come next.

Israel’s government began the week by setting a formal new war goal: the return home of 60,000 people in northern Israel displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire. On the Lebanese side of the border, 90,000 people have been displaced by the conflict.

Since the goal was announced, Hezbollah has been struck in ways it’s become used to, namely air strikes, and ways it never anticipated, meaning the wave of deadly pager and walkie talkie explosions.

Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant has spoken of a new phase in the war, with the centre of gravity said to be moving north. A division of the army has been moved north, away from its previous focus on Gaza in the south.

But, despite all this, Israel’s new war goal doesn’t appear any closer to being achieved.

Just yesterday, Hezbollah fired around 200 rockets into northern Israel, according to the Israeli military, and the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has said it won’t stop fighting until Israel ceases its aggression in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

As a result, there’s public debate about Israel’s next move, including a potential ground incursion into southern Lebanon, and that’s feeding into international concern about a slide into all-out war.

Following yesterday’s airstrikes on Beirut, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a brief message on social media. It said: “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has posted on X, external, saying it is now attacking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

In Gaza, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least 13 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.

In a separate incident, according to Wafa, a number of people were injured in a strike on Al Falah school in the same area.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has released a statement, external today saying its Air Force targeted members of Hamas who were operating in an area "previously used" as the Al Falah school in Gaza City.

It comes as the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says 41,391 Palestinians have now been killed since October 7 - the day Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, with 251 people taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Israel's official figure for those held in Gaza is now 101.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

Image source, EPA

In Dahieh, a southern suburbs of Beirut, the search and rescue mission continues.

People are shocked.

A few families I know from Dahieh told me last night and this morning that they have all moved to “safer neighbourhoods”.

The heavily fortified neighbourhood is controlled by Hezbollah, but not all people who live in Dahieh are Hezbollah supporters or all Shia.

“This is missing from all media,” my friend Nour, who lives there, tells me.

She is Shia and says her family define themselves as leftists and secular people.

Nour is working for an international aid organisation and was instructed to leave Dahieh and move to another neighbourhood after an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attack that killed Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr on 30 July.

But her sisters and elderly parents refused to go with her then.

Now she has written to me that they finally decided to leave and are moving to her place this morning.

“But is there anywhere safe?,” she asks me.

A question that now many in Beirut and Lebanon ask, after having drones and jets overhead.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

The whole night and this morning, here in Beirut, we could hear Israeli drones buzzing.

It sounds like a giant mosquito or an electronic fan.

They were even flying over areas that are considered relatively safe and “not a target” for Israel, because they are mainly Christian or Sunni neighbourhoods and not Hezbollah-controlled areas.

I live in one of those “safe” places.

But at midnight their buzzing over our buildings got noticeably louder in a way that despite generators and car noises around, we could hear them clearly.

This morning, people are waiting at the scene of yesterday's Israeli air strike on a densely-populated area on a Beirut suburb.

The Lebanese health ministry says at least 31 people were killed in the attack, including three children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it was a targeted strike on Hezbollah, with members of the Iran-backed group among those killed.

Hezbollah is proscribed as a terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK, the US and other countries.

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

This is the worst moment in the group’s history.

For almost a year, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia movement supported by Iran, fought a low-level conflict with Israel.

This week marked an escalation in those hostilities, adding to fears of an all-out war.

But what happens next remains unclear. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says the group is ready for a major confrontation but has repeatedly indicated they are not interested in one.

The device explosions killed dozens and wounded thousands more, who suffered severe eye, facial and hand injuries, while Friday’s strike hit a densely populated area, destroying at least one residential building.

Hezbollah does not have many options to give a significant retaliation without triggering a war with Israel.

The group’s backers, Iran, do not see a reason for a wider conflict either. Hezbollah is part of Iran’s deterrence, and it is vital to have a strong Hezbollah right next to Israel’s borders.

Israel, however, is indicating that the latest developments are just the beginning of a new phase in the conflict.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

It has been a humiliating series of setbacks for Hezbollah, a group that wants to be seen as a powerful and sophisticated enemy by Israel.

First, on Tuesday, pagers used by its members exploded, in a shocking attack widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

A day later, walkie-talkies.

Then, on Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit the group’s stronghold in Dahieh, in southern Beirut, killing senior members including the top military commanders of its elite Radwan unit.

In July, another Israeli airstrike - also in Dahieh - killed Fuad Shukr, a right-hand man to leader Hassan Nasrallah and the most high-profile figure to have been assassinated in the current conflict.