Image source, Reuters

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, says his country "remains committed to working with our international partners" to make sure aid reaches Gaza, following concerns from other countries that the humanitarian situation there is deteriorating.

Speaking at a meeting of the UN in New York City, Danon blames Hamas for delays in aid reaching the area.

"There is no shortage of aid", he says, adding that "when you look at the amount of aid that is being delivered into Gaza the problem is with the logistics to make sure it goes to the people who need it and not into the hands of Hamas."

Humanitarian aid is entering Gaza on lorries this week, following two weeks of delays in shipments.

The US has placed pressure on Israel in recent days, and a letter leaked to the press earlier this week says that Washington would cut off some military aid to Israel if the humanitarian situation doesn't improve.

Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel today. The Israel Defense Forces says 90 projectiles - which usually means rockets - have crossed into the country in the last 24 hours.

Earlier, the IDF says it intercepted a "suspicious aerial target" in the Jezreel Valley area.

And separately in southern Israel, the IDF says it intercepted a launch that crossed from Gaza after alerts were activated in the Mefalsim and the Nir Am area.

More now on the fighting in southern Lebanon today. Earlier, Hezbollah said its forces had fired a missile at an Israeli tank in southern Lebanon, wounding its crew.

The Israeli military has now released an update on what appears could be the same incident.

It says Israeli troops spotted Hezbollah fighters firing an anti-tank missile and then fleeing into a nearby building. Shortly afterward, the Israeli Air Force struck the building, it says.

The IDF has also released footage appearing to show two men running into a building, which is subsequently destroyed in a massive explosion.

Israel's update does not mention Hezbollah's claim that the Israeli tank's crew suffered casualties, and Hezbollah has not commented on any casualties in a strike.

Image source, Getty Images

So far 156,943 children in Gaza have now received a second dose of the polio vaccination, the director general of the World Health Organization says.

Beginning on Monday, local medics and UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) are spending the next two weeks giving out the vaccine in the second round of the campaign - with a target of reaching 590,000 children aged under 10.

The first round of vaccines took place in September.

Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious.

Polio re-emerged in Gaza in August - the first such case in the territory in 25 years. Humanitarian groups have blamed the re-emergence on disruption to child vaccination programmes as well as massive damage to water and sanitation systems caused by the war.

Image source, EPA

• Israel carried out air strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut for the first time in five days. It says warplanes hit an underground warehouse used by Hezbollah to store weapons

• The mayor of the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh was killed, along with five others, after Israel struck a municipality building during a crisis meeting. The IDF says they hit "dozens of Hezbollah terrorist targets" in the area
• In Gaza, Israel reports having killed another Hamas commander and more than 50 "terrorists" in the Jabalia area
• The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says 65 people have died in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours
• Humanitarian aid crossed into northern Gaza for the first time in two weeks on Monday, it was announced, with more aid arriving on Tuesday and Wednesday. As we reported yesterday, the US warned Israel on Sunday it could see military aid cut if they failed to increase aid access
• Hezbollah has fired more rockets into Israel, with at least two people injured

Earlier this afternoon, Hezbollah said it fired a "barrage of rockets" towards Karmiel in northern Israel.

The Israeli military now says it detected 30 "projectiles" crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory, adding that it intercepted most of them.

Israel's emergency services say paramedics treated two people hit by shrapnel in the Upper Galilee region.

The UN special co-ordinator in Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, has responded to the Israeli strike on the city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon today.

Six people were killed and 43 people injured in the strikes, which hit Nabatieh’s municipality building when the mayor was attending a crisis team meeting.

"Violations of international humanitarian law are utterly unacceptable," Hennis-Plasschaert says, adding that "civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times".

"It is time for all concerned actors to immediately cease their fire and open the door to diplomatic solutions capable of realising the needs of citizens and advancing regional stability," she says.

Image source, Getty Images

Let's head back to Lebanon now. Earlier we reported on the aftermath of Israeli strikes on Qana, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, where the Lebanese health ministry said one person was killed.

The ministry now says three people were killed in the strikes, with 54 injured. Rescuers are continuing to search the rubble.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

More now from northern Gaza. Mohammed Saleh, the acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, says his hospital is inundated with casualties every day, as Israel carries out raids in the area.

He warns the attacks on the local refugee camp are putting the healthcare system "on the brink of disaster".

"Medical teams are dealing with complex injuries amid severe shortages of medicines, medical supplies and fuel, in addition to the lack of food for patients and medical staff in the hospital," Saleh says in a statement to the Palestinian Press Agency.

Many doctors at the Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and the Indonesian hospitals have refused to leave their patients, despite Israel's recent offensive in Jabalia.

"We are talking about more than 300 medical staff working at Kamal Adwan Hospital, and we can't provide even a single meal for them to be able to offer medical services safely," hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya tells Reuters.

Israel says it's targeting Hamas in Jabalia, and earlier said it killed "50 terrorists in close-quarters encounters and aerial strikes over the past day".

Yolande Knell
Middle East correspondent, in Jerusalem

For the third day running, since two top US officials signed a letter calling for Israel to let more aid into Gaza, there has been an announcement of lorries entering into the worst affected north.

This follows a period of two weeks when the UN says no aid had entered the north.

The Israeli military says 50 trucks carrying humanitarian aid - including food, water medical supplies, and shelter equipment provided by Jordan - were transferred today to the northern Gaza Strip through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and the Erez West Crossing.

The military says all aid was transferred after "thorough security inspections", and that they will work "in accordance to the international law to facilitate and ease the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip".

Image source, IDF

Image source, Reuters

We've been focusing on Lebanon for the past few hours - but let's turn our attention back to Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed 65 people in the past 24 hours.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says the situation in northern Gaza is "beyond catastrophic" - and the constant threat of air strikes means "there is no safe place" for Palestinians to shelter.

Spokeswoman Nebal Farsakh tells BBC News that delays in aid deliveries - the first aid in two weeks arrived on Monday - have caused "even more human suffering".

"Children, women are being attacked, many are losing their lives," she says. "Many of the injured bleed to death without being able to receive emergency medical services."

Two days ago, the UN said more than 400,000 people, external were still in northern Gaza.

We're seeing images now of the aftermath of Israeli strikes on Qana, near Tyre in south Lebanon, as rescuers search the rubble.

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

The Lebanese health ministry confirms that six people were killed in Israeli air strikes on the city of Nabatieh this morning, adding that 43 were injured.

As we reported earlier, one of the strike's victims was the mayor, who was attending a crisis team meeting in a municipal building.

Joel Gunter
Reporting from Beirut

Nabatieh governor Howaida Turk tells the BBC the Israeli strikes that killed the mayor of the city, and four other municipality staff on Wednesday, happened during a meeting of a crisis team co-ordinating aid for civilians remaining in the area.

The governor says the known number of dead is six – five municipality staff and one member of the public who was in a nearby building.

She says the number of dead could yet increase because the rubble was still being searched.

The mayor, Ahmad Kahil, and other municipality staff had stayed behind in Nabatieh to assist people who had not fled, Turk says. The majority of the population of Nabatieh has left the area following heavy Israeli air strikes.

"This is just like strikes all over Lebanon," she says. "They have hit civilians, Red Cross, civil defence. Now they have targeted a government building. It is unacceptable. It is a massacre."

Previous strikes on Nabatieh in recent days have destroyed historic buildings, including an Ottoman-era market dating to 1910.

As Israel hits Lebanon with air strikes, the Israeli ground operation in the south of the country continues.

In the past hour, Hezbollah says it hit an Israeli tank with a guided missile near the southern Lebanese village of Ramia.

Yesterday, Hezbollah said it hit three Israeli bulldozers and a tank close to the same village, in the Bint Jbeil district near the border.

Israel has not commented on the specific claims - but earlier said it was conducting "limited, localised, and targeted operational activity against Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon".

Lebanon's prime minister has condemned the Israeli strikes on Nabatieh - which his office say "intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council".

Prime Minister Najib Mikati says "this new aggression, coupled with all the crimes committed by the Israeli enemy against civilians, is a design of the world that is deliberately silent about the crimes of the occupation, which encourages it to persist in its transgression and crimes".

He also questions the use of demanding a ceasefire from the UN, "if all the countries of the world are unable to deter a blatant aggression against the Lebanese people.

"What can deter the enemy from its crimes that have reached the point of targeting peacekeeping forces in the south? What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?"

Image source, AFP

Israeli strikes on Beirut seemed to defy US pressurepublished at 10:35 British Summer Time 16 October

10:35 BST 16 October

Joel Gunter
Reporting from Beirut

Image source, Reuters

The Israeli air strikes on Beirut this morning – after five days of respite for the Lebanese capital – came just hours after the US said it opposed the "scope and nature" of Israel’s bombing campaign on the city.

State department spokesman Matthew Miller told a briefing on Tuesday that the US had expressed its concerns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying they were "made clear to the government of Israel".

As my colleagues covered earlier, there had been reports that the unexpected pause in air strikes against Beirut was the result of a US intervention.

The strikes on Wednesday morning came shortly after Netanyahu rejected the idea of a ceasefire that would leave Hezbollah close to the northern Israeli border.

He told the French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday he was "opposed to a unilateral ceasefire which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which would return the country to its previous state" according to a read-out from his office.

Also on Tuesday, in a televised address, Hezbollah's deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution to the recent escalation was a ceasefire - while also threatening to continue targeting Israel with missiles.

Image source, Reuters

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have confirmed that they hit Nabatieh in southern Lebanon this morning.

As we have been reporting, five people were killed by air strikes, including the city mayor.

In a post on Telegram, the IDF says they "struck dozens of Hezbollah terrorist targets in the Nabatieh area and dismantled underground infrastructure used by Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces in southern Lebanon.

"The targets include terrorist infrastructure sites, Hezbollah command centres, and weapons storage facilities, which were embedded by Hezbollah adjacent to civilian infrastructure, exploiting the civilian population as a human shield."

Image source, Reuters

As we've just reported, a number of Israeli strikes have hit Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, killing at least five people - including the city's mayor.

The AFP news agency has spoken to Nabatieh's governor, Howaida Turk, who says 11 strikes hit the city and its surroundings.

She says the strikes "formed a kind of belt of fire" in the area.

These attacks come just days after previous Israeli strikes destroyed the city's marketplace.

Riam Dalati
Reporting from Lebanon

Image source, AFP

The mayor was among five people killed today in Israeli strikes on the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, a local source tells the BBC.

An eyewitness described the situation as "frantic terror", saying at least nine violent air strikes had targeted the city within the span of 30 minutes.

The eyewitness, a local of the city, said one of the air strikes had hit Nabatieh's municipality building where the mayor was attending a crisis cell meeting to deal with the humanitarian situation in the city.

The city resident said he saw ambulances rushing towards the scene to help with the search and rescue efforts.

The Ministry of Public Health has confirmed the strike, saying the initial death toll currently stands at five people killed.