Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi says the latest strikes on Lebanon are to prepare for the "possible entry" of troops
More than 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon since Monday, the UN says, as Israel's military says it is carrying out a new wave of "extensive" strikes in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa area
Fifty-one people have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Wednesday, Lebanon's health ministry says
Earlier, Israel said it had intercepted a ballistic missile fired by Hezbollah towards Tel Aviv - the first such rocket to target the city
Iran-backed Hezbollah says it is resisting Israeli "aggression" and acting in solidarity with Palestinians. Israel says it aims to remove the threat from Hezbollah
Since 8 October, there has been near-daily cross border fire between Israel and Hezbollah and around 70,000 people are displaced from northern Israel
Lebanon's health ministry says 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women, have been killed in Israeli strikes since this morning.
At least 1,645 people have been injured, it added.
Raffi Berg
Digital Middle East editor
Image source, ReutersIn a cafe in Beirut, people watch Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah delivering an address
Hezbollah is the most powerful force in Lebanon - politically influential with an armed wing which is stronger than the Lebanese army. It is sometimes even referred to as a "state within a state".
The Iran-backed Shia Islamist movement held sway over the government for several years, in an alliance with Shia and some Christian parties, and although the grouping lost its parliamentary majority two years ago, deadlock in negotiations with Hezbollah mean Lebanon has not yet formed a new government.
The movement exerts control with its allies through key ministries and the civil service, especially in Shia majority areas such a southern Lebanon, southern Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. Its strongest support is among Lebanon's Shia community, where it has built a network of schools and hospitals and runs welfare programmes. It is also supported beyond the Shia community as a resistance movement against Israel.
However, Hezbollah also faces significant opposition in Lebanon. Large parts of the country's Sunni community, which is about the same size as the Shia one, as well as sections of the sizeable Christian and Druze communities, see Hezbollah as a destabilising force which has brought Iranian influence into Lebanon and is too powerful.
There are also fears that its escalating confrontation with Israel could mean the rest of Lebanon could pay a heavy price.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says that it has hit 1,300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the last 24 hours.
The IDF says it attacked cruise missiles, rockets and drones which were "placed in the heart of the villages, in civilian homes", claiming that Hezbollah planned to launch them towards Israel, "while at the same time endangering the residents of Lebanon".
As we reported earlier, Israeli military officials said they carried out a targeted strike on Lebanon's capital Beirut, with Reuters news agency reporting that the Israel Defense Forces were targeting Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki.
Now Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group, says that Karaki is "fine and, God willing, in full health and wellness and has moved to a safe place".
Lebanon's health minister, Dr Firass Abiad, says tens of thousands of people have been fleeing their homes in the south of the country, adding that "the main aim of these attacks was to instigate this exodus of civilians from the target areas".
"It's clear the Israeli government's intention is to escalate and provoke," he tells BBC Radio 4's World Tonight.
"We are in a new stage of war, initially it was targeted attacks but now it's indiscriminate."
He says the vast majority of the population do not want war, and he doesn't think the escalation over the last week is because of Lebanon. "The decision has been made across the border that escalation is required."
Lebanon's ministry of health says that 356 people have now been killed as result of Israeli strikes in towns and villages in southern Lebanon, Bekaa and Baalbek, since this morning.
It says that 24 children and 42 women are among those killed, while 1,246 others have been injured.
Jeremy Bowen
International editor, reporting from Jerusalem
While the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict has been going on for decades, the current war between them started the day after the Hamas attacks on 7 October last year.
Hezbollah started a limited but continuous campaign of rocket fire over the border, trying to tie down Israeli troops and damage Israeli property and people.
Since then, around 60,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate to the centre of the country. In the last few days, returning them to their homes has been added to Israel’s list of war aims.
The US, UK and other allies - and critics - of Israel believe that the only hope of cooling this dangerous crisis is to get a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has said attacks on Israel will go on until a Gaza ceasefire happens. But it seems pretty clear at this point that neither the leader of Hamas nor the leader of Israel is prepared to go for the deal the US have put on the table.
The war itself has overwhelming support from Israelis, although PM Benjamin Netanyahu remains unpopular with significant parts of Israel’s electorate, despite an improvement in his poll ratings.
Many Israelis also think Netanyahu is an appalling leader who tells lies and has abandoned the hostages in Gaza. So he is a very controversial character, but bolstered in the parliament by the right wingers who support him, he is politically secure.
His decision to go on the offensive is risky. While Hezbollah is wounded, it has plenty of capacity to hit back. And that is why Israel’s friends and enemies are still preparing for the worst.
Israel's military is preparing for the next stage of its operation in Lebanon, its chief of staff says.
"Essentially, we are targeting combat infrastructure that Hezbollah has been building for the past 20 years. This is very significant. We are striking targets and preparing for the next phases," Herzi Halevi says in a statement.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel's air strikes have destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets today across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the east.
Frank Gardner
Security correspondent
Rocket by rocket, airstrike by airstrike, both sides in this conflict are inching their way up the ladder of escalation, towards the brink of a full-scale war.
Israel has expanded its airstrikes on Hezbullah to include those places where it says it’s hiding some of its most powerful long-range missiles, including in private houses. In this way it is trying to de-fang its enemy, robbing it of its most potent weapons and forcing it to accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.
But Hezbollah is not giving up. It too has expanded its range of targets to include Haifa, Israel’s big commercial port on the Mediterranean.
A full-scale war is still not inevitable - there is still so much more damage both sides could do to each other. But with no ceasefire in sight, it’s hard to see either side backing down.
Iran has strongly condemned Israeli air strikes on Lebanon, with the country's President Masoud Pezeshkian accusing Israel of seeking to create wider conflict.
Pezeshkian says the West had been urging Iran not to retaliate so as not to jeopardise efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza.
"We tried to not respond," he says
"They kept telling us we are within reach of peace, perhaps in a week or so," he said. "But we never reached that elusive peace."
Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson warned Israel of "dangerous consequences"
Iran and Israel have been enemies since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which brought in a regime that has used opposing Israel as a key part of its ideology. Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks its eradication.
Tom Bateman
State Department correspondent, in Washington DC
The US is sending "a small number" of additional troops to the Middle East, the Pentagon says.
"In light of increased tension in the Middle East and out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional US military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region," says Pentagon spokesman Maj Gen Pat Ryder in an off-camera briefing with reporters.
He would not answer any follow-up questions on the specifics.
Ryder also reiterated US concerns over the potential for a wider regional conflict.
He says: “I don't think we're there yet, but it's a dangerous situation and this is why it's so important that we continue to communicate and continue to work together to promote and find a diplomatic way ahead."
Image source, ReutersA girl looks out from a car window while people in heavy traffic drive north from Lebanon's southern coastal city Sidon
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has now conducted a targeted strike, external on Beirut, which the Reuters news agency is reporting targeted senior Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki, the head of the southern front.
The IDF has been targeting areas in southern Lebanon today, with residents in some areas receiving text and voice messages telling them to leave “residential buildings that are being used by Hezbollah for hiding weapons".
Israel's last attack on Beirut came on Friday last week when top Hezbollah commanders were killed in an attack on a residential area.
This is the fourth time Israel has targeted Beirut this year.
The BBC has been on the streets of Beirut asking residents how they feel about the intensifying Israeli air strikes.
One young man says he is "very scared of the war escalating" because "it will cause a lot of disaster, it will stop students going to university".
Another man is defiant: "We're not scared, we have to stand tall, we have to defend ourselves."
"The thing that's happening is far away from humanity and this shouldn't be happening."
Some people speak of the need for national solidarity during the crisis.
"If a total war happens, we should stand as Lebanese people together regardless of our political affiliations because at the end of the day, our country is getting bombed," another man says.
Image source, ReutersForeign Minister Israel Katz has accused Hezbollah of using civilians as "human shields"
Israeli Foreign Secretary Israel Katz is accusing Hezbollah of deploying missiles in the homes of Lebanese civilians, "using the civilian population as human shields".
"Any civilian living near Hezbollah weapons should leave their home immediately for their own safety," he writes on X, formerly Twitter.
Israel has long-accused Hezbollah of embedding its forces among Lebanon's civilians, including building tunnels under their homes.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military says more than a million Israeli civilians in and around the northern city of Haifa are seeking safety in bomb shelters from incoming Hezbollah rockets.
We held a Your Questions answered session on the BBC News channel earlier, here's a few of the questions which were sent in.
Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner, was asked just how close the region is to all-out war.
"It's not inevitable," he says, "and there are very good reasons for both sides to be constrained. In April I think it looked really close to being a much wider scale war that drew in Iran and the US and others. Things were very serious then, but they managed to march both sides down from the brink".
"In this particular case, it's a case of who blinks first, and Israel is clearly hoping to so degrade Hezbollah's ability to hit it."
Chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet was asked how can Israel do such extensive bombing of a neighbouring country without declaring war, replying "it's the history of the region".
"It seems to be war in all but name now. But it could be much, much worse. They could be targeting the cities, as has been done in the past, with much more casualties."
Jeremy Bowen
International Editor, reporting in Jerusalem
It is becoming the bloodiest day in Lebanon since Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of Hamas on 8 October last year.
Israel launched a massive series of air strikes this morning with nearly 300 dead, according to the Lebanese government, and the Israelis warning of more attacks to come.
The war is escalating fast, a process that is being driven by the scale of Israel’s air offensive.
They are warning civilians to leave the areas they’re targeting. The next, the military has said, will be the Bekaa Valley in the east of Lebanon - which is a Hezbollah stronghold.
Even before the current escalation, well over 100,000 Lebanese were forced to leave their homes because of Israeli strikes, with no immediate expectation of being able to return.
So we are seeing yet another very large escalation by the Israelis. Perhaps their calculation is that they believe Hezbollah - in such a weakened position right now - that this is their opportunity to really inflict some damage on it, and to change the strategic picture in the hills and towns either side of the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Image source, EPAThe United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has expressed "grave concern" for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon.
The head of the mission, Gen Aroldo Lázaro, has contacted both Lebanese and Israeli parties, emphasising the urgent need for de-escalation, it says.
"Any further escalation of this dangerous situation could have far-reaching and devastating consequences."
The UNIFIL, which is a UN peacekeeping force, cautions that attacks on civilians violate international law, and could amount to war crimes.
Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut
Image source, Hassan HarfoushA family of five travelling on a motorbike to Tripoli in Lebanon's north from a village in the south
The atmosphere here in Beirut is tense. We've seen many cars with licence plate numbers belonging to southern Lebanon, some with suitcases strapped to the top while the inside is completely packed.
It’s clear that families have tried to squeeze into one car in the rush of leaving their houses.
We manage to stop a family of five on a motorbike to talk briefly and they tell us they're from a village in the south, with plans of making their way to Tripoli in Lebanon's north. They look exhausted.
"What do you want us to say? We just had to flee," the father tells us anxiously.
While setting up for our live report on the side of the road, a taxi driver stops to shout across to us: “You are press, you should know. Do you know if there [is a] fuel crises right now? Too many people are coming to Beirut.”
We don’t have an answer though. No one at the moment can predict what’s going to happen next.
While I am writing this, Israeli jets have started to intensify their strikes on Bekaa Valley in north-eastern Lebanon. The Israeli army had issued a warning, giving civilians from the area two hours to leave their homes.
The Bekaa Valley is considered a Hezbollah stronghold and has been hit by Israel in the past few months, but the attacks this time seem much heavier.
Lebanese authorities have just updated the death toll from today's Israeli air strikes.
At least 274 people have now been killed, 21 of whom were children, according to Lebanon's health minister.
A further 1,024 people have been wounded in the strikes, the minister adds.