Our video team have pulled together this short clip from earlier this morning, which helps show the scale of air strikes in the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon.

Tyre is less than a 45-minute drive from the Israeli border and is now feeling the brunt of strikes that the Israeli military says it is carrying out across the region.

Plumes of smoke have also been seen from Marjayoun, further east.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health issued a statement earlier this morning requesting that all hospitals in the south of the country cancel non-urgent surgeries.

Clinicians are being told to prepare for the wounded who may arrive in emergency departments.

As we just reported, there have already been hundreds of people wounded from this morning's air strikes.

Schools are also closed in the south of the country and in Beirut's southern suburbs for today and tomorrow, according to the education ministry.

Image source, Reuters

At least 100 people have now been killed in today's Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, according to a recent update from the country's health ministry.

More than 400 people are also injured, the ministry adds.

Orla Guerin
Reporting from Beirut

Returning now to the streets in Lebanon, where we are seeing heavy traffic on the road from the city centre in Beirut.

Lots of people on the move. Hard for them to know where to go.

Heavy Israeli strikes are happening in southern Lebanon and recorded warnings have been sent to people in Beirut to evacuate areas of the capital including the district of Hamra.

This area is home to the information ministry, banks and universities, and not a Hezbollah stronghold.

Hezbollah has fired dozens of rockets towards northern Israel, the group says in a statement.

It says military bases and logistics warehouses were targeted with "dozens" of missiles, in response to Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon.

In a separate statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says at least 35 rockets were fired from Lebanon and several impacts identified.

A man in his 50s was lightly wounded by shrapnel in the Lower Galilee region, the Israeli military says.

It adds that several rockets were shot down by air defences while others made impact in open areas close to the community of Ami'ad.

Lebanon's health ministry says 50 people have been killed in the strikes on villages and towns in southern Lebanon since this morning.

In a statement from the Public Health Emergency Operations Center, it adds that more than 300 have been wounded, including "children, women and paramedics".

Image source, Getty Images

We've had quite a few updates out of Lebanon and Israel this morning. If you're just joining us now, here are the latest developments:

• Phone warnings: People in southern Lebanon - including a government minister - say they've been receiving text and voice messages warning them to leave villages where Hezbollah is operating and storing weapons. Israel's military have also issued similar warnings publicly, telling people to avoid being near Hezbollah targets
• Hundreds of strikes: This wave of strikes from Israel into Lebanon have been described by our correspondent as some of the most intense of the conflict. The IDF said mid-morning that it had attacked more than 300 Hezbollah sites
• One dead, several wounded: The latest update we have from Lebanon's health ministry is that one person has been killed in the latest strikes, just north of the Bekaa Valley. Others have been injured in the Hermel region and in the town of Aitaroun
• Strikes "deepening": Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says the strikes are intensifying and will continue "until we achieve our goals" of returning thousands of displaced Israelis to the north
• What next? The question many are asking is, will Israel begin a ground invasion? Our international correspondent says it could be going in that direction. But a senior Israeli military official says at the moment the IDF is currently focusing on its "aerial campaign only"

Israel faces hard task in pushing Hezbollah back from borderpublished at 11:13 British Summer Time 23 September

11:13 BST 23 September

Jeremy Bowen
International Editor

I think this could be going in the direction of a ground offensive.

The Israeli armed forces spokesman gave a briefing this morning in which he reiterated the war aims as stated by the prime minister, including the elimination of Hamas and the return of the hostages from Gaza - and, what is now an additional official war aim, of getting the more than 60,000 Israelis who have had to evacuate the northern border area back to their homes.

There’s almost double that many people on the Lebanese side who have also had to leave their homes, as Israeli air forces are targeting the area.

That aerial push will continue, said the spokesman, but he also talked about destroying the Hezbollah infrastructure in the border area and pushing them back.

I don’t think that’s something military can easily do from aircraft.

Israel’s record of invasions in Lebanon is not - for them - a happy one.

They have not gone the way that they expected and despite predictions about how they would change things strategically for Israel, this has, in the past, left them in a bigger mess in terms of their security in the north than predicted.

Image source, Getty Images

Another update from the Israeli military has just come through.

The Israel Defense Forces says in a message on X, external that "so far, more than 300 Hezbollah targets have been struck today".

It also shared a photo of what it says is the moment the IDF chief of staff approved the attacks. That picture shows him and other senior commanders peering over a map.

Image source, Reuters

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has recently addressed a meeting of military officials in Tel Aviv, during which he said strikes on Lebanon are "deepening".

“The sequence of operations continues and will continue until we achieve our goals - to return the residents of the north safely to their homes,” he says in Hebrew.

"Ahead of us are days when the public will have to show composure, discipline and full obedience to the directives of the Home Front Command."

About 60,000 Israelis were evacuated from their homes in the north after Hezbollah began intensifying the number of rockets it sent into Israel on 8 October 2023. They have yet to return.

Raffi Berg
Digital Middle East editor

Image source, Reuters

The conflict going on between Israel and Hezbollah is connected to the war in Gaza - but there are other reasons too.

The catalyst for what is happening now was a rocket attack by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah in and around northern Israel one day after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel. Israel retaliated and fighting between the two sides has been spiralling ever since.

Hezbollah says it is acting out of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where a war has been going on between its ally Hamas and Israel since the 7 October attack.

Cross-border attacks, such as the ones we've been seeing this past week, can be seen as a strategy by the Hezbollah to put additional pressure on Israel and divert resources away from the war in Gaza.

But hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah long precede the conflict in Gaza and are part of wider regional dynamics.

Hezbollah is aligned with Iran - Israel's arch foe - which funds, trains and equips its armed wing, the most powerful military force in Lebanon. It presents itself as a resistance movement to Israel, though, like Iran, it also calls for Israel's elimination.

The two sides have fought and attacked one another since Hezbollah's inception in the early 1980s, including in a 34-day war in 2006.

Since then there have been skirmishes between them around the Israel-Lebanon border, breaking out into fighting in October which has become more sustained and intensive in recent weeks.

• Our full explainer also gives a bit more context about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah

Image source, Getty Images

As we just reported, people in Beirut have been receiving phone messages this morning urging them to leave areas where Hezbollah is operating or "hiding weapons".

Lebanon's information minister Ziad Makary has also confirmed this is happening, saying in a statement that "a large number of citizens in Beirut" have received "unified random telephone messages via the terrestrial network, calling on the respondent to evacuate his place of presence".

The minister's office also received one of these messages, the statement adds. Makary describes it as part of a "psychological war" carried out by Israel.

Israel has previously issued warnings via phone call or text message to people in Gaza ahead of attacks - although BBC analysis has found some warnings contain errors.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

People in southern Lebanon have been receiving text and voice messages this morning warning them to stay away from “residential buildings that are being used by Hezbollah for hiding weapons".

In one video circulating on social media (which I was able to verify through people living in the south of Lebanon), it shows a villager who has received a voice message, which says the Israeli operation continues and has entered a “new phase”.

The voice memo continues: “If you are in a village that is being used by Hezbollah, leave it immediately for your own safety.”

These phone messages come as similar warnings have been posted on social media - in both English and Arabic - by spokespersons for the Israeli military.

Those warnings have been directed at citizens in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in the north east, saying they should stay far from areas that Hezbollah fighters are operating or hiding weapons.

Image source, Reuters

We've just received a new statement from the Israel Defense Forces, which says it is "conducting strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in southern Lebanon".

Earlier in the day, we heard from IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, who said the military will carry out more "extensive and precise" strikes in Lebanon.

He has warned people to move away from Hezbollah targets "for their own safety".

Lebanon’s health ministry has just recently confirmed that one person has been killed in Israeli air strikes in the north of the Bekaa Valley.

The strikes on the outskirts of Hermel also injured six people, two of them seriously, according to the ministry.

Earlier, NNA reported that a shepherd had been killed outside the town of Bodai, which is in the Hermel region.

A separate air raid on the town of Aitaroun, close to the Israeli border, injured 11 people, the ministry says.

Image source, Reuters

Fears of an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East have been heightened in the past week after cross-border attacks involving Israel and Hezbollah intensified.

Here's what's been happening in brief:

• On Tuesday, 12 people were killed and thousands wounded after pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon
• The following day hundreds of walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded, killing 27 people and wounding hundreds
• Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the attacks, while Israel has declined to comment - though it is widely assumed to be responsible
• On Friday, Israel said it conducted an air strike in the neighbourhood of Dahieh, a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, killing a commander from the Iranian-backed militia and other senior figures

• Lebanon’s health ministry said 45 people, including three children, were killed in that strike
• Cross-border attacks continued over the weekend, with Hezbollah launching 150 projectiles into Israel, while Israel carried out air strikes into southern Lebanon that it said destroyed thousands of the militia's rocket launchers

A senior Israeli military official says the IDF is “currently focusing on Israel’s aerial campaign only“ after being asked if a ground invasion of southern Lebanon is imminent.

Speaking in a background briefing to reporters, the official set out the three military goals for the current campaign, which would allow Israel to achieve its aim of returning thousands of displaced citizens to the north of the country.

The official says Israel wants to degrade Hezbollah's ability to fire rockets over the border as it has done since 8 October, as well as push its fighters back from the Lebanon-Israel border.

The third aim is to destroy the infrastructure that has been built by Hezbollah’s elite infantry force - the Radwan forces - which the official says would be used to attack “Israeli communities in the north, to massacre, murder, and kidnap Israeli civilians”.

Image source, Reuters

Lebanese media outlets report that there were Israeli air raids on dozens of locations in the south and east of the country at around 06:30 local time (04:30 BST).

State news agency NNA says there were more than 80 strikes in the southern Nabatieh district, and strikes on multiple areas of Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun.

NNA also reports intense air strikes in the eastern Bekaa region, targeting the areas around Baalbek and Hermel.

As we reported in an earlier post, the agency has separately said that one person was killed in Bodai, which is just to the north-east of Baalbek.

Image source, Reuters

We're just hearing now that Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has spoken to US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.

Gallant says he provided his US counterpart with a "situation assessment of Hezbollah threats and briefed him on IDF operations to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks against Israeli civilians," in a post , externalon X.

The wider regional security situation and "threats posed by Iran and its proxies" were also discussed, he says.

• For context: On Sunday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed to have fired cruise missiles and drones at Israel. Hezbollah is the main player in the so-called Axis of Resistance, an alliance of factions across the Middle East supported by Iran.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) is reporting that one person has been killed and six others wounded in Israeli air strikes this morning.

The deadly strikes occurred on the outskirts of Bodai, a town in the Bekaa Valley in north-eastern Lebanon.

The NNA identified the fatality as a shepherd and said two members of his family were among the injured transferred to hospitals.

Hezbollah also said via its Al-Ahed website that one person was killed and six others wounded in Bodai.