We are pausing our live coverage of the situation in the Middle East for today. You can read more about today's strike in Beirut by clicking here.

• Fourteen people have been killed and 66 have been injured after Israel's military said it carried out a "targeted strike" on the suburb of Dahieh in southern Beirut - a stronghold of the armed group Hezbollah
• Israel said it killed Hezbollah's operations commander Ibrahim Aqil, alongside other senior members of an elite unit tasked with carrying out attacks on northern Israel

• Earlier today, Hezbollah fired 140 rockets from the Lebanese border into the north of Israel. One person sustained minor injuries, the Israeli police said
• Hezbollah said its attacks targeted Israeli army sites
• It comes after the explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon, which killed dozens and injured thousands

We will resume our coverage on Saturday. This page was edited by Sean Seddon, Adam Durbin, Nathan Williams and Dulcie Lee. Hugo Bachega, Carine Torbey and Nafiseh Kohnavard reported from Beirut.

The IDF's strike on Beirut today, which killed at least 14 people and injured 66 more, follows the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon earlier this week. That attack targeting Hezbollah members - which Israel is widely assumed to be behind - killed 37.

What do we know about the devices?

Walkie-talkies

• At least some of the walkie-talkies that exploded were the IC-V82 model produced by the Japanese company, ICOM
• Those devices were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, according to a security source speaking to Reuters news agency
• ICOM said in a statement it had stopped manufacturing and selling the model almost a decade ago
• Its director Yoshiki Enomoyo suggests the devices may have been retrofitted with explosives

Pagers

• Images of broken pagers showed the logo of a small Taiwanese manufacturer, Gold Apollo
• The BBC visited their offices in a suburb of Taipei, where the founder Hsu Ching-Kuang denied any involvement and instead pointed to a Hungarian company - BAC Consulting
• Officials in Hungary say the firm is merely a "trading intermediary with no manufacturing or operational site"
• The New York Times has reported, external that the company was in fact a front for Israeli intelligence, the BBC has been unable to verify these reports

Image source, EPA

The pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon earlier this week "represent a new development in warfare where communication tools become weapons," the UN's high commissioner for human rights has said.

Volker Türk told a meeting in New York that he is "appalled" by the tactic, which killed at least 37 people, including two children, and injured more than 3,400.

Israel is widely considered to be behind the attack, which targeted devices used by Hezbollah members.

Türk adds the explosions have "unleashed widespread fear, panic and horror" in Lebanon and stresses "this cannot be the new normal."

Image source, Getty Images

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

Lebanon is still coming to terms with the unprecedented wave of attacks that came not from missiles or drones, but from exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, as people who carried them were shopping or at home with their families.

Even for a population that has gone through so much in recent years – a severe economic crisis, the Beirut port explosion, street protests – the psychological blow has been immense, adding to the anxiety of almost a year of near-daily cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel.

Many here are concerned that there is more to come.

“This is strange, so strange. Nobody thought that something like this could happen,” 58-year-old Samia told us. “The situation is unbearable. What they’re doing with us is unheard of... Of course I was afraid... Is there anyone who isn’t afraid? What happened was really frightening.”

Ibrahim, who is 73, said: “Explosions in phones? That’s something new. This hasn’t happened before. People lost their sight, their limbs… All Lebanese people are upset. But not all of them are involved in what’s happening. Because not everyone is a member of Hezbollah... What Israel has in store for us, we don’t know.”

The question now is about how Hezbollah is going to respond. The explosions were a humiliation for a group that wants to be seen as a sophisticated and formidable enemy by Israel.

Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has promised to retaliate against Israel and, because of the scale of what happened, it needs to be seen to respond - but any strong reaction is likely to trigger a major war with Israel.

Image source, PA Media

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy chaired an emergency Cobra meeting earlier today on the escalating situation in Lebanon and the Middle East.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said the meeting involved discussions on "ongoing preparedness work, with the risk of escalation remaining high".

The statement continued: “The safety of British nationals is our number one priority which is why we’re continuing to advise people to leave Lebanon now while commercial routes remain available."

The BBC understands the government wants to be ready to evacuate British nationals from Lebanon at short notice.

Nafiseh Kohnavard
BBC Persian Middle East correspondent, Beirut

Elsewhere, Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah Shia paramilitary group says its commander was killed in Damascus earlier today, in what it said was an Israeli strike.

The group says Abu Haidar al Khafaji was in the Syrian capital as an “adviser”.

The Iranian-backed group are allies of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

There have been multiple strikes on Kataib Hezbollah bases on the Syria-Iraq border in the past few years, mostly claimed by the US military - but there were some unclaimed attacks that Israel was suspected of being behind.

Israel has not commented on the strike, and rarely discloses its military activities in Syria.

It marks the first time a member of the group has been killed in Syria in an apparent targeted assassination.

Kataib Hezbollah is considered one of the most secretive and elite Shia paramilitary groups backed by Iran, and the US has blamed it for several attacks on US-led coalition bases in Syria and Iraq.

Their previous leader, Abu Mahdi Muhandis, was killed along side IRGC Quds force commander Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January 2020.

Image source, Reuters

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will delay an official visit to New York because of the security situation in the north of the country, according to the AFP news agency.

Netanyahu had been due to make a five-day trip to deliver an address to the United Nations.

His office had said he was due to meet world leaders on the side lines of the event, but no further details were given.

AFP reports Netanyahu will now travel to the US on 25 September, a day later than originally scheduled.

More now from the scene in southern Beirut, where the latest pictures from the ground show the response to the Israeli strike earlier is ongoing.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Lebanon's health ministry says the number of people killed in the Beirut strike has risen to 14.

The agency says it expects that number to rise as searches of the rubble continue.

There has not been an update on how many people were injured. Earlier, that figure stood at 66 people - nine of whom were in a critical condition.

British businesswoman Laura Patterson has two companies in Beirut and told the BBC she won't leave Lebanon.

The UK Foreign Office has advised British nationals to leave the country, external.

Patterson said the situation in southern Lebanon is "awful" but that "we have to continue living and working".

"We’ve got to keep just trying to continue as much as we can and for me to do that best I have to be here despite what’s going on around us."

Speaking to Radio 4's World at One programme earlier, she said people in the Lebanese capital are "much more terrified than they have been previously".

She recalled the sonic boom noise from Israeli jets yesterday afternoon, saying she was in a cafe at the time and that "everybody started screaming and you think it's a bomb".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a short statement, which says:

Israel made the safe return of about 60,000 residents to the north of the country an official war goal, after a meeting of Netanyahu's security cabinet on Monday.

Hamas has condemned the "brutal" Israeli strike on Beirut, which the Israeli military says killed the head of the Hezbollah's elite Radwan unit, Ibrahim Aqil.

The Lebanon-based armed group is allied with Hamas.

Hezbollah increased its attacks on Israel after its military attacked Gaza in response to Hamas's unprecedented 7 October attacks, in which around 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated terrorist organisations by Western states, Israel and some Arab countries.

In its latest statement, Hamas said it "condemns the brutal and terrorist aggression", describing it as "an escalation".

Israel's defence minister has just issued a statement in the wake of the strike in Beirut.

In a post on X. Yoav Gallant says: "Our enemies have no place of refuge - not even the Dahieh in Beirut.

"We will continue operating against Hezbollah until we achieve our mission: ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes."

For context: About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of near-daily attacks by the Iran-backed group in Lebanon.

Earlier, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said he was not aware of any communication from Israel ahead of the strike in Beirut on Friday.

"And that, of course, as you know, is not atypical. All I can assert to you is that there was no US involvement," he told reporters.

Kirby said the White House is "involved in intense diplomacy to prevent escalation of conflict along Israel-Lebanon border".

The US government has told its citizens not to travel to Lebanon, and to leave if they are already there, amid spiralling tensions.

Raffi Berg
Digital Middle East editor

The series of strikes carried out between Israel and Hezbollah since Thursday night are the latest in a sequence of events which have raised fears of all-out war each time.

While the two sides have been fighting almost daily since October, it was an incident in July - when a missile attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed 12 Druze children - that marked a sharp escalation.

Israel blamed Hezbollah for that strike, Hezbollah denied involvement.

Days later Israel killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. It said Shukr had ordered the attack which killed the children. Hezbollah vowed to retaliate.

But within hours, the head of Hamas - an ally of Hezbollah - was killed in an explosion in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Iran - a patron of both Hezbollah and Hamas - blamed Israel and vowed revenge. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied it was behind the killing.

Almost a month later, Israel carried out what it said was a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah to thwart an imminent rocket and drone attack. Hezbollah said it had still managed to fire 320 rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Shukr.

Then this week thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah blew up in Lebanon, killing at least 32 people and injuring more than 3,000. Hezbollah has blamed Israel, with its chief saying the attack had “crossed all red lines”.

Events feel to be spiralling, with the spectre of all-out war looming large. Both sides say they do not want that, but both also say they are ready..

Image source, EPA

Let's bring you some comments from US President Joe Biden, who has been asked what the Lebanon situation means for the region.

"In the peace process, we are continuing to try to do and try for the beginning, to make sure that both people in northern Israel as well as southern Lebanon are able to go back to their homes and go back safely," Biden told reporters.

Biden says his team of officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, are working "to try to get it done".

"We're going to keep at it till we get it done, but we've got a way to go out," he adds.

Image source, US Department of Justice

The US government published this picture of Ibrahim Aqil - the man Israel says it killed in the Beirut strike - last year.

It was issued as part of a notice offering a $7m (£5.2m) reward for information that led to senior Hezbollah commander's capture.

It is not clear when it was taken.

Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent, reporting from northern Israel

Scores of rockets flew into northern Israel today, with volley after volley being intercepted over the towns of Safed and Rosh Pinna.

A simmering border conflict, already eleven months old, appears to be intensifying.

But for all the sirens and the explosions, some Israelis here in the firing line see this week as a welcome turning point.

“For the first time, after eleven months, we have hope that people will be able to come back to their homes,” retired IDF intelligence officer Sarit Zehavi told me this morning at the offices of Alma, a research centre she runs close to the border.

“Because something is truly being done to damage the capabilities of Hezbollah. This was not the case until now,” she says.

This week has seen Israel land one spectacular blow after another on Hezbollah’s manpower and capability.

The group has shown that it’s still capable of hitting back, but today’s rocket attacks were all easily dealt with and did little damage.

Israelis are realistic – they’re not declaring victory over Hezbollah, which they’ve come to recognise, after decades, as a formidable enemy.

But they all hope that the tide of the war has turned this week.

Hugo Bachega
Middle East correspondent, in Beirut

This latest Israeli attack, which the IDF says killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut, is another sign of the precise intelligence Israel has about the group.

In July, another airstrike in Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut, killed Fouad Shukr, a right-hand man to the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and responsible for its military operations.

He was the most-high profile Hezbollah member to have been killed in the current conflict.

Today's attack is another humiliation for Hezbollah, in a week when hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by the group exploded, causing chaos and panic across Lebanon.

It was an unprecedented security breach that indicated how Israel had managed to penetrate the group’s communication system.

The number of people killed in the Beirut strike has risen to 12, an update from Lebanon's health ministry says.

There are now 66 people injured, nine of whom are in critical condition, it adds.

The IDF says it killed several senior Hezbollah figures.