Middle East crisis live: fate of Hezbollah leader remains unclear as Israel steps up attacks on Lebanon | Israel

As we have been reporting, Israel launched attacks in the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight into Saturday. Israel issued fresh warnings for people to leave part of the densely populated Dahiyeh suburbs before dawn on Saturday, forcing many families to spend the night on the streets. Israel’s military have now said jet fighters have attacked “dozens” of Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, with airstrikes continuing in the south. The strikes targeted buildings where weapons were stored and sites where rockets were launched into Israel, the military claimed.

In a statement issued this morning, the Israeli military said:

Over the past two hours, the IAF (air force) conducted extensive strikes on dozens of terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in the area of Beqaa (east) and in different areas of southern Lebanon.

Numerous reports have said that Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah was the target of Israel’s strikes on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Friday evening. There has been no official confirmation of whether Nasrallah was killed in the strikes or not.

The Israeli Defense Forces said the military carried out a “very accurate” strike on Hezbollah headquarters, but did not mention Nasrallah’s name. Media outlets quoted Hezbollah sources as saying he was “alive and well” but the Iran-backed militant group haven’t yet made an official statement.

The unprecedented five hours of continuous strikes early on Saturday followed Friday’s attack in which several whole apartment blocks were levelled, by far the most powerful by Israel on Beirut since October.

The apparent targeting of Nasrallah – who has been the leader of Hezbollah for 32 years – marks the most alarming escalation in almost a year of war between Hezbollah and Israel, as my colleague Peter Beaumont explains in this analysis piece. Nasrallah represents Iran’s most important regional asset and has long been seen as linchpin in the so-called axis of resistance.

The Israeli military says it killed the leader of Hamas in southern Syria on Friday night, naming him as Ahmed Muhammad Fahd.

Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, posted on X in Arabic saying (in a translation to English) that “the so-called Ahmed Fahd was responsible for carrying out numerous terrorist operations against IDF forces and the state of Israel from the southern Syrian area, including launching rockets towards the Golan Heights area”.

Adraee said Israeli air force warplanes carried out the attack under the guidance of the intelligence service and the northern command.

Fahd was liquidated when he planned to carry out another terrorist plot in the immediate future.

Welcome to our continuing live coverage of Israel’s strikes in Lebanon and the wider Middle East crisis – it’s just gone 8.20am in Beirut and Tel Aviv.

A wave of air raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Saturday as Israel stepped up attacks on Hezbollah, after a massive strike on the Iran-backed movement’s command centre that apparently targeted leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Reuters witnesses heard more than 20 airstrikes before dawn on Saturday. Thousands of Lebanese fled their homes in the southern suburbs and congregated in squares, parks and sidewalks in central Beirut and seaside areas.

Israel’s military said early on Saturday that about 10 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory and that “some” had been intercepted. They were detected after sirens sounded in the Upper Galilee area, a military statement said.

An unprecedented five hours of continuous strikes early on Saturday followed Friday’s attack, by far the most powerful by Israel on Beirut during nearly a year of war with Hezbollah and making a sharp escalation of the conflict, Reuters reported.

The latest escalation has sharply increased fears the conflict could spiral out of control, potentially drawing in Iran, Hezbollah’s principal backer, as well as the United States.

There was no immediate confirmation of Nasrallah’s fate after Friday’s heavy strikes, but a source close to Hezbollah told Reuters he was not reachable. The militant group has not made a statement.

In other developments:

• The Lebanese health ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in Friday’s attack. The toll appeared likely to rise much higher as rescue workers cleared the rubble. Several apartment blocks in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood were reduced to rubble, and footage from the scene showed huge slabs of concrete topped by piles of twisted metal and wreckage. Several craters were visible, into one of which a car had fallen.

• Israel’s military earlier ordered southern Beirut residents to evacuate and warned it was planning to strike three specific buildings in the area. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted a map of certain areas of Dahiyeh and said residents “were obliged to evacuate the buildings immediately and move away from them at a distance of no less than 500 meters”.

• Hezbollah responded to Israel’s Friday attack on Beirut by bombing Safed, a city in north Israel, with a rocket salvo “in response to Israeli attacks on cities, villages and civilians”. The Iran-backed group announced more attacks at Karmiel and Sa’ar. Israel braced for potential retaliation from Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as from Yemen and Iran, urging residents of Golan Heights, Safed and Merom HaGalil to stay near protected areas.

• The Israeli military claimed to have killed the commander of Hezbollah’s missile unit in southern Lebanon, Muhammad Ali Ismail, and his deputy, Hossein Ahmed Ismail, in fighter-jet attacks. The IDF also said on X that “with them other commanders and terrorists of Hezbollah were eliminated”.

• Hundreds of families crammed into vehicles and fled Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight into Saturday after Israel’s strikes and warnings to evacuate. Bottlenecks formed in the middle of the night on normally deserted streets of the capital, many of them in darkness due to power cuts.

• Joe Biden has directed the Pentagon to “assess and adjust as necessary” American forces in the Middle East, the White House said after Friday’s attacks. The US president said earlier on Friday the US had “no knowledge of or participation” in the strike. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had personally approved the strike, and announced that he had cut short his US visit and would return immediately to Israel.

• The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, voiced regret that no power, including the US, could “stop” Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the Israeli prime minister appeared determined to crush militants in Gaza and Lebanon.

• Tens of thousands of people protested in Iranian cities and in the Yemeni capital to condemn Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, Agence France-Presse journalists and state media reported.

• The strikes came shortly after Netanyahu gave a bellicose speech in the UN general assembly and shrugged off global appeals for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. Instead the Israeli prime minister denounced the UN as an “antisemitic swamp” and insisted Israel was “winning” its wars on multiple fronts. Many national delegations walked out in protest as he took the floor.

• The UN secretary general, António Guterres, reiterated his call for a Middle East ceasefire, saying: “Gaza remains the epicentre of violence, and Gaza is the key to ending it.”