Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent

Earlier, we spent an hour answering your questions live - you can see a selection earlier in the page.

How can there be peace, Tony from Caernarfon asked, while Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are committed to Israel’s destruction?

It’s a perfectly reasonable question. "Death to Israel" has long been a rallying cry among members of the "axis of resistance”.

For Israelis, this is existential. Never mind that Israel, as the region’s unrivalled superpower, has the military and intelligence capability (and allies) to deal - so far - with pretty much everything its enemies throw at it.

But, says Israel, the intent matters.

The Hamas attacks of last October confirmed Israelis’ worst fears about what the "axis of resistance" will do, given half a chance.

Hezbollah has in the past spoken of invading northern Israel in a similar way (and produced videos outlining their plans).

Israel sees the hand - and the ideology - of Iran behind both groups, as well as the Houthis in Yemen and so-called "Popular Mobilisation Units" in Iraq.

For their part, the groups argue that it is Israel which denies the political rights of the Palestinians and seeks to destroy them.

Would they drop their opposition to Israel’s existence if Israel made a durable peace with the Palestinians?

It’s not a proposition that’s ever been properly tested.

Both Israel and Lebanon have been hit by intense strikes today. Here are some of the latest pictures we're seeing:

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says that senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine was "probably" killed in a strike last week.

It was suggested that Safieddine could be the next leader of the group, after his cousin and former leader - Hassan Nasrallah - was killed last month in an Israeli air strike. US media reported Safieddine had been killed in Israeli bombing in Beirut but it's not been confirmed.

During a briefing command with the Israel Defense Forces, Gallant also says Hezbollah forces have become "battered and broken" since Nasrallah's killing - something Hezbollah denied earlier.

Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine's whereabouts since the strikes.

• Who was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah?

Joel Gunter
Reporting from Beirut

Israel’s assassination campaign in Lebanon over the past few weeks has left "no safe place in Beirut", the city’s mayor tells the BBC.

Two recent strikes in the heart of the city showed that it was not just areas associated with militant groups that were at risk, says Abdallah Darwich, in an interview at his office in Beirut.

Intense Israeli bombing of certain areas means that potential Israeli targets have now spread out around the city, he says

"You do not know who is living in this building or that building, so you do not know if there is a target there.

"You can no longer say Beirut is safe. Where the next Israeli target is, nobody knows.”

The two strikes Darwich referred to, in Bachoura and Cola, targeted members of Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the IDF said at the time. One destroyed a health clinic.

Earlier today we reported that Hezbollah fired one of its largest barrages of rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have just said they attacked the infrastructure where those rockets were launched by Hezbollah into Haifa.

Hezbollah has not commented.

As our correspondent Sally Nabil has just mentioned, the World Health Organization earlier gave an update on Lebanese health facilities.

It says health infrastructure in Lebanon has become "severely damaged" since Israel stepped up its attacks against Hezbollah.

In total in the past year, the WHO says there has been 36 attacks on health facilities, killing 77 health workers and injuring 74 others.

And Dr Hanan Balkhi, regional director of the WHO's regional office for the Eastern Mediterranean, says 28 health workers were killed and two injured in a single day last week.

Sally Nabil
Reporting from Beirut

In one of Lebanon’s biggest hospitals, medical crews are working long hours to treat those wounded in Israeli air strikes.

We’ve been told by officials here at Rafik Hariri public hospital in Beirut that they’ve received hundreds of injured people in the past two weeks.

"All who came here were civilians, we feel they are deliberately targeted. We can no longer count our working hours," the hospital's director general, Jihad Saada, tells me.

"Most of the injuries were in the head and limbs," he adds.

He hopes the international community steps up to protect health facilities as well as civilian infrastructure against Israeli air raids. Thirty-six health facilities in Lebanon have been hit since October, the World Health Organization reports.

Saada says they’ve been under increasing pressure, as several hospitals in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs are no longer operating due to Israeli bombardment.

Many of those patients had to be transferred to the capital. Some of the health workers in his hospital, he says, lost their homes in the recent air strikes.

The hospital is continuing to try and get as much medical equipment as possible, as the conflict seems to be open-ended - for the time being.

As we reported earlier, Israel has expanded its ground operation in southern Lebanon, sending troops across the western border.

In the east, where the invasion began a week ago, Israel says its soldiers have taken over a Hezbollah "combat compound" with weapons aimed at northern Israel.

Israel says the compound - which included a residential building, an olive grove, and underground infrastructure - was discovered during IDF operations in the Maroun El Ras area in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has yet to comment.

I was struck by the interest in *how* these wars are being foughtpublished at 13:13 British Summer Time 8 October

13:13 BST 8 October

Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent, in Tel Aviv

Like my colleague Paul, I was struck by the interest in the earlier question-and-answer session about how these wars are being fought.

A number of questions focused on who was providing the weapons. One asked why, if Lebanon’s Hezbollah has always been called well-armed, does it seem to be losing militarily?

That comes down to a fight between Israel’s formidable military and intelligence services, backed by America’s advanced weaponry and financial assistance.

Hezbollah, and other groups armed and trained by Iran, have significant missile arsenals, and special forces, but no air defences. Paul also pointed out that Hezbollah still hasn’t used all of its long-range firepower.

In this vein, we were also asked why countries like the US and Britain are backing Israel when it isn’t a Nato member.

There are strong, ironclad relationships going back to the founding of the state of Israel. But Western leaders have been pointing out that this friendship means they can raise tough questions - when required - about how Israel is using its weapons to wage war.

It's vital to hear the audience's questionspublished at 13:06 British Summer Time 8 October

13:06 BST 8 October

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent

This morning we spent an hour answering your questions live - you can see a selection earlier in the page.

When you spend your professional life deep in the weeds of issues as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the wider rifts of the Middle East, it’s vital to hear what questions the audience is asking.

Why is Palestinian territory split in two? What about Iran’s stated aim of destroying Israel?

Why do Britain and the United States offer such unwavering support for Israel?

After everything that’s happened in the past twelve months, should we be worried about terrorist attacks here at home?

As Nicky Campbell said while hosting the Q&A Lyse Doucet and I took part in earlier, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. I’ll let others pass judgement on the answers.

There aren’t too many silver linings to the events of the past year, but one is that it’s forced us all to think about a part of the world that perhaps we had become complacent about.

The conversation is important, even if the answers are often elusive. We will be summarising some of our responses here shortly - and below is a clip from the session.

Nick Beake
Reporting from northern Israel

Image source, Reuters

On 8 October last year, Hezbollah started its rocket attacks on Israel, in solidarity - it said - with Hamas and its assault the previous day.

Today, one year on, Hezbollah have launched more than 100 rockets, targeting - for the second time in two days - Israel’s third city, Haifa.

Yesterday, there was a direct hit on Haifa, something that hadn’t happened since 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah last fought in Lebanon during a month long campaign.

Videos posted online show some damage to buildings and cars and debris in the street.

A municipality official in Haifa told us there were no serious casualties - although, as we said in our last post, 12 were taken to hospital.

The official said the vast majority of people continue to heed warning to go to shelters.

Since Israel started its ground invasion into Lebanon a week ago, those warnings have increased in the communities around us in northern Israel, with the frequent sound of sirens ringing out.

Image source, MDA

We've got some updates on Hezbollah's earlier rocket attack on Haifa and the Krayot area.

Twelve people have been taken to hospitals after the attack, says Israel's emergency services Magen David Adom (MDA).

Of those, the 71-year-old woman we mentioned earlier is reportedly in a minor condition with a shrapnel wound to her hand.

Six people were injured while heading to a shelter, and five are suffering from anxiety, MDA says.

Israeli media also report that a school has been damaged, with some windows broken.

• Hezbollah has fired more than 100 rockets towards the cities of Haifa and Krayot in northern Israel - the IDF has said most of these were intercepted
• The IDF says it's begun a "limited" ground operation against Hezbollah in the western part of south Lebanon - it comes a week after the ground invasion began on the eastern side of the border
• In a televised speech, Hezbollah's deputy leader insisted the group's resources were "in good shape" - a claim an IDF spokesperson said "does not acknowledge reality"
• Hezbollah commander Suhail Hussein Husseini was killed in a strike yesterday in the Beirut area, the IDF says
• In Lebanon, 1.2 million people have become displaced since Israel stepped up air strikes last month and 400,000 have fled to neighbouring Syria

Image source, Reuters

Although we've been concentrating on southern Lebanon and northern Israel today, fighting continues in Gaza between Hamas and Israel's military.

In the past hour Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says a further 56 people have been killed in the Strip in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 41,965 since the war began.

Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces said its fighter jets had attacked about 70 targets across Gaza over the past day, including infrastructure and military structures.

It said it killed 20 Hamas fighters from the air and on-the-ground fighting in the Jabalia area in the north of the Strip. It also said an Israeli soldier was killed in fighting in the north yesterday.

Meanwhile, the military wing of Hamas says it carried out attacks in northern Gaza.

Image source, Israel Defense Forces

The families of staff members working at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv have been evacuated from Israel following "the escalation" in fighting.

In a statement, the embassy says those working there remain.

On Monday, Hezbollah targeted Tel Aviv with rockets, causing some damage in the wider area.

As we've reported, Hezbollah has launched more than 100 rockets towards Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel in the past few hours.

We've got some images showing the moment some of them are intercepted above Haifa:

Image source, AFP

Image source, AFP

Image source, Reuters

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says a short while ago it once again launched air strikes on Dahieh in Beirut.

Dahieh, a southern suburb with a strong Hezbollah presence, is a densely populated area that has been repeatedly and heavily targeted in recent Israeli raids.

It had earlier been hit by at least 10 air strikes by the IDF overnight, according to Lebanese media, as you can see in the map below:

How can there be long-term peace?published at 11:40 British Summer Time 8 October

11:40 BST 8 October

As we bring you the latest news from Haifa in Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region, let's bring you a final question from our hour-long session, which finished earlier.

Our correspondent Lyse Doucet was given two questions, which boiled down to this: how can there be peace in the region?

Hezbollah says it has fired rockets towards the Haifa and Krayot area in northern Israel, saying it had launched "a large salvo of missiles".

The Israeli military also said it detected 85 rocket launches from Lebanon at just after midday local time, and most of them were intercepted but "several crashes were detected in the area".

A further 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory, the Israel Defense Forces added a short while later.

Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service says a 70-year-old woman had been injured by shrapnel, as it shared video appearing to show a building that had been hit. Israeli media also reported a building in Kiryat Yam in Haifa had been damaged.

Haifa, the country's third largest city, has a population of around a quarter of a million. It was hit yesterday for the first time in nearly 20 years.

As our correspondents began answering your questions, we heard from Hezbollah's deputy leader, Naim Qassem, who made a televised speech in Lebanon.

Qassem insisted Hezbollah's resources and capabilities were "in good shape" - despite weeks of Israeli air strikes and a ground invasion - and its command and control remained "solid".

We can now bring you Israeli reaction, via the military's Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee.

He calls the speech "desperate" and that Qassem is "stubborn and does not acknowledge reality".

He says Hezbollah - which is designated a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US and others - is trying to raise morale, but Adraee asks how the people of Lebanon can "believe such bravado".