Middle East crisis live: IDF urges some residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate amid strikes on Hezbollah targets

The Israeli military suggested a ground incursion in Lebanon may be needed to secure its war goals as it conducted another round of extensive strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

Reuters reports Monday’s strikes constituted the most geographically widespread bombing that Israel has simultaneously carried out since its conflict with the Iran-based movement a year ago in parallel with the war on Gaza.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari called on residents of south Lebanon to keep away from Hezbollah posts.

Asked by reporters about a possible Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon, Hagari said “we will do whatever is needed” in order to return evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes safely, a war priority for the Israeli government.

Israeli warplanes carried out an intense wave of airstrikes on towns along Lebanon’s southern border and even further north on Monday morning, according to Reuters witnesses.

Welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis.

The Israeli military said on Monday it was conducting extensive strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and urged villagers in the country’s south near areas used by the militant group to evacuate.

The strikes comes amid some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire in nearly a year of conflict.

The chief Israeli military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said on Monday the Israel Defense forces had begun “striking terrorist targets throughout Lebanon” after “indications that Hezbollah was preparing to fire towards Israeli territory”.

Hagari said in a video posted on X: “We advise civilians in Lebanese villages located in and next to buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes – such as those used to store weapons – to immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety.”

Monday’s strikes came a day after the Iranian-backed Hezbollah sent rockets deep into northern Israeli territory. The militant group fired more than 100 rockets early on Sunday across a deep and wide area of northern Israel, some landing near the city of Haifa. The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday killed at least 45 people, including one of Hezbollah’s top leaders.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said at the funeral of one of the group’s commanders killed: “We have entered a new phase, the title of which is the open-ended battle of reckoning.”

The exchanges of fire prompted the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to warn of the risk “of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza”.

In other developments:

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it had in recent days dealt Hezbollah “a series of blows it could not have imagined”. The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said operations would continue until it was safe for evacuated people on the northern Israeli side of the border to return. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said Israel did not want a war with Lebanon but that it had a right to self-defence. Israel’s civil defence agency, meanwhile, ordered all schools in the country’s north to close.

• Israel’s chief of the general staff, Herzi Halevi, said the military was well prepared for the next stages of fighting, which were coming in the next few days. “We will do whatever it takes to removes threats against Israel,” he said in a televised statement.

• Israeli forces raided the office of global news channel Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank on Sunday and issued a 45-day closure order. The Israeli military said it closed the Al Jazeera TV office in Ramallah because it incited “terror”, an accusation the network vehemently denies.

• At least 41,431 Palestinian people have been killed and 95,818 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said.

• An Israeli airstrike killed at least seven people in the Kafr Qasem school in Beach camp – which was sheltering displaced families – in Gaza City on Sunday, Palestinian health officials said.

• Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said 12 people had been arrested for being operatives collaborating with Israel and planning acts against Iran’s security. The arrests were in six different Iranian provinces, it said.

• Israel is examining a plan to use siege tactics against Hamas in northern Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by several Israeli media outlets as saying. The prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The reports on Sunday cited unnamed sources at a closed parliament committee meeting.