In another update just now, the IDF says it is continuing to carry out strikes on Hezbollah targets, and its air force has "attacked" launchers in southern Lebanon.

The launchers, it says, fired rockets earlier today into the Tiberias area of Israel. You can read more about that here.

The IDF says in the last two hours, the air force has attacked "dozens of weapons depots, launchers aimed at Israel's home front and military buildings" belonging to Hezbollah.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

The day in Beirut again started with two rounds of strong sonic booms that were heard across the city.

Israeli jets flying low and breaking the sound barrier over the skies of Lebanon’s capital have become almost part of our daily lives. Sonic booms are a mock air raid. They sound like a real explosion, as if there was a strike.

It is mainly considered part psychological warfare, as it creates fear for civilians.

But there is also a military purpose. Breaking the sound barrier can help detect "enemy radars" a Western military official tells me. It is believed that Hezbollah has radar systems that can detect Israeli jets or missiles by heat or sound.

The Lebanese government filed a complaint to the UN regarding this issue in August, calling the incidents a "flagrant breach of Lebanon’s sovereignty". It accused Israel of breaking a security council resolution which prohibits collective punishment and intimidation.

Although these sonic booms are scaring many civilians, some people have started confronting the situation with humour. There is now a website called Jidarsot.com - sound barrier in Arabic - which asks people to rate the sound they have heard from 0-10.

Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Image source, Reuters

The UN refugee agency says more than 30,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the last 72 hours, according to Reuters. The vast majority - about 80% - are Syrians and the remaining Lebanese.

"They are crossing from a country at war to one that has faced a crisis conflict for 13 years," UNHCR representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, tells a news conference.

Syria has faced its own refugee crisis since a conflict that started in 2011.

Around 70,000 Israelis have been displaced from the north of the country since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by the war in Gaza, began nearly a year ago.

And in Lebanon, around 90,000 people have been displaced since Monday, adding to the 110,000 who had fled their homes already, according to the UN.

We reported earlier that five Syrian soldiers have been killed in a strike on the Syrian-Lebanese border. This is thought to be part of Israel's strategy to cut the supply of Iranian weapons being given to Hezbollah via Syria.

Earlier this week the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Maj Gen Tomer Bar, said even though Israel has badly damaged Hezbollah's military capacity, it now needs to stop Hezbollah's ability to recover. The pipeline of arms through Syria is key to that.

"In Lebanon we're going to prevent any possibility of arms transfers in Lebanon from Iran," he told a meeting of officers on Thursday.

Hezbollah receives strong military and financial backing from Iran and is an ally of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Image source, EPA

In another statement released this morning, Hezbollah says it has stuck the area of Ilaniya in Israel.

The area is in between Haifa and Tiberias - both locations where Hezbollah said it also had fired rockets into this morning.

The Iran-backed group says it hit the area with a "salvo of Fadi 1 missiles".

Image source, Getty Images

The UK government has asked commercial airlines to lay on extra flights out of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to enable British nationals to leave.

It’s estimated that there are currently several hundred people with British (and only British) passports in the country, and 5,000 dual nationals and their immediate families.

The government is urging them all to leave Lebanon now.

Middle East Airlines is laying on extra flights over the weekend. But demand for them is not thought to be huge, at the moment - with many people choosing to move northwards rather than leave the country.

Image source, Getty Images

We've been receiving pictures of Lebanese Red Cross teams searching for people in rubble in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon this morning.

Earlier, nine people were killed as a result of a strike in Shebaa - a town in the Nabatieh province.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Orla Guerin
Reporting from southern Lebanon

If you drive in southern Lebanon at the moment, you have the road pretty much to yourself.

We have been driving for the past two hours or so from the city of Tyre, going east, and we have seen only a handful of cars. For a long stretch of the journey, we saw no other vehicles on the move. We passed many boarded-up businesses and homes, and some sites of recent Israeli airstrikes.

We have seen and heard Israeli air strikes – with three or four explosions sending smoke rising from the hills in the area of Nabatieh.

Israeli jets have also been flying low, breaking the sound barrier, bringing people out onto the balconies in fear, to check what is happening.

We are now driving through the mountains, past olive groves, heading to a village which was hit by an air strike at 3am this morning Lebanese time.

Local officials have now confirmed to us there are nine dead, all civilians, including a pregnant woman and two children. The area is Sunni and not connected to the Shia armed group, Hezbollah.

Our colleagues at Newsday heard this morning from a medic in Beirut who has described seeing a "massive influx" of patients arriving in ambulances in the last couple of weeks.

H​isham Bawadi, chief nursing officer at the American University of Beirut Medical Centre, says the individuals who came to the facility last week were "mainly civilians". This week, he continues, they've also had transfers, mainly of women and children, from other hospitals.

He adds that all have required "complex care".

Bawadi further explains that the healthcare system has been "overstretched" in the last couple of years. Certain hospitals will take the complex cases as they have the expertise, he says.

The IDF has just said it has launched dozens of strikes against Hezbollah infrastructure sites in southern Lebanon.

In a statement, it also says it has struck a launcher from which rockets were fired this morning towards Haifa and Krayot in northern Israel.

Hezbollah this morning said they fired rockets into Haifa and the IDF said some of the rockets were intercepted and others fell on open area.

The IDF separately says "approximately 10 projectiles" were identified coming from Lebanon following sirens in the area of Lower Galilee are - the "majority" of which were intercepted, they added.

In an earlier post, the military says it intercepted four UAVs coming from Lebanon into the coastal area of Rosh HaNikra, which is located north of Haifa.

There is a scope for a lot more pressure from the US to push towards a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Saudi ambassador to the UK tells the BBC.

"The whole international community has failed," Prince Khalid Bin Bandar Al Saud tells Radio 4's Today programme.

Asked if his government would resume talks with Israel about normalising relations between the two countries, he replies that the immediate focus should be a ceasefire.

Saudi Arabia remains interested in normalisation with Israel, he says, "butwe don’t see a solution without a Palestinian state”. Asked if Saudi Arabia would be willing to help rebuild Gaza, he says it would only do so as part of a Palestinian state, and there were no plans to send in a Saudi-led peacekeeping force to Gaza.

The Syrian defence ministry has said in a statement that five soldiers were killed and a sixth injured following a strike carried out by Israel.

The statement adds that the attack, which took place in the early hours of the morning, was targeted at one of their military sites on the Syrian-Lebanese border in the Damascus countryside.

Hezbollah has just claimed that it attacked two areas in Israel - Tiberias and Kiryat Ata in Haifa.

Earlier we reported on sirens sounding in the two areas which are both located in northern Israel.

The Iran-backed group says in a statement that it targeted Tiberias "with a salvo of missiles".

The Reuters news agency is reporting that an overnight Israeli strike has killed nine people, including four children, of the same family.

Citing Mayor Mohammad Saab, Reuters says the strike took place in the southern Lebanese town of Shebaa.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

There was some hope yesterday that the intense diplomatic efforts by Western countries could result in a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

This morning, the mood is much more pessimistic.

Israel says it is going to continue to attack the group, a campaign that has included intense and widespread airstrikes that have killed more than 600 people across Lebanon and forced the displacement of at least 90,000.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the negotiations for a ceasefire would continue, but this appears to be a familiar strategy: to let negotiations happen amid international pressure without, perhaps, really wanting them to succeed.

Domestically, he is under pressure from hard-line allies to continue with the attacks, and military officials are probably saying that more needs to be done to substantially degrade Hezbollah. A ground incursion into southern Lebanon could come next, to push the group away from the border.

Hezbollah, too, has not given signs it is willing to back down, and continues to fire rockets at Israel. It says its attacks will only stop if there is a ceasefire in Gaza. It is difficult to see how they can detach themselves from Gaza without being viewed as capitulating to Israel.

The IDF has claimed to have more killed senior Hezbollah figures during a strike in the Beirut area on Tuesday.

In an operation they call "Northern Arrows" the IDF previously said they killed the Head of Hezbollah's Missiles and Rocket Force - Ibrahim Muhammad Qabisi.

In an update it now says others, including Qabisi's deputy, were also killed.

We've had some images through this morning of Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepting rockets over Haifa, launched from Lebanon.

The IDF says some rockets have been intercepted - and others fell in open areas.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

The IDF has issued updates this morning on sirens in Tiberias and Haifa - both located in northern Israel.

It says that "10 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon" following sirens in the Haifa area.

"Some of the projectiles were intercepted and others were identified as having fallen in open areas," the military says.

Meanwhile, Israeli media reports that a rocket fell in an open area following the siren in Tiberias.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

Rejecting calls for de-escalation, Israel says it will continue to target Hezbollah in an offensive that has already killed hundreds across Lebanon and forced tens of thousands from their homes.

Amid mounting pressure on hospitals and a growing number of displaced residents, the Lebanese authorities are appealing for an immediate ceasefire.

At the UN, the foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said his country was enduring a crisis threatening its very existence, and that it was urgent to stop it before it became impossible to be contained.

Hezbollah has also indicated it is not willing to back down, and continues to fire rockets at Israel.

Overnight, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile that had been launched by the Houthis in Yemen. Like Hezbollah, they’re also supported by Iran.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told the UN General Assembly last night that "Lebanon is currently enduring a crisis which is threatening its very existence."

Habib warned of a "domino effect" the result being a crisis "impossible to contain" as he called for an immediate ceasefire.