Middle East crisis live: Six killed and 15 injured in Israeli strike on Beirut

Israel struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Iran-backed Islamist militant organisation fired rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, a day after a wave of Israeli airstrikes killed nearly 500 people in Lebanon and sent tens of thousands fleeing for safety.

Here’s our latest video report:

Unicef deputy representative to Lebanon Ettie Higgins has spoken at a press briefing in Geneva, saying any further escalation in the situation for the country’s children is would be “catastrophic”.

She said:

Children are in danger as I speak, exposed to ongoing attacks, displaced from their homes and unable to rely on an overstretched and under-sourced health system.

Any further escalation in this conflict would be catastrophic for all children in Lebanon, but especially families from villages and towns in the south and the Bekaa, in Eastern Lebanon, who have been forced to leave their homes. These newly displaced add to the 112,000 people who have been displaced since October.

Schools are closed today across the country, leaving children at home in fear. Their caregivers are themselves afraid of the uncertainty of the situation. This fear cannot be overstated, as the barrage of shelling and air raids continue, and increase, daily.

We are ramping-up our response. We are preparing to deliver food, water, and essential supplies such as mattresses and hygiene kits to displaced families, especially those in collective shelters.

Unicef urgently calls for an immediate de-escalation and for all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the protection of civilian infrastructure and civilians, including children, humanitarian workers and medical personnel.

Yesterday was Lebanon’s worst day in 18 years. This violence has to stop immediately or the consequences will be unconscionable.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has said the world “cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza” at the UN general assembly. Citing wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and Sudan he denounced what he said was a growing number of governments and other groups who feel they are “entitled to a get out of jail free card.”

Without specifying who, he said:

They can trample international law. They can violate the United Nations Charter. They can invade another country, lay waste to whole societies, or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people. And nothing will happen. The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable.

On Lebanon specifically he said:

Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon – the people of Israel – and the people of the world – cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.

Speaking at his party’s conference in Liverpool, the UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer has called for “restraint and de-escalation” in Lebanon and “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza”.

To applause from delegates, PA Media quotes him saying:

This is a time when great forces demand a decisive government prepared to face the future. We can see that again in the Middle East today. So I call again for restraint and de-escalation at the border between Lebanon and Israel. Again, all parties to pull back from the brink.

I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the hostages, and a recommitment to the two-state solution, a recognised Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Israel.

And that’s the message I will take to the UN general assembly when I travel there later today, alongside our steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”

Hezbollah used a new rocket, Fadi 3, in an attack on an Israeli army base, the group announced in a message posted on Telegram on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

The claim has not been independently verified.

Reuters reports Lebanese sources have informed it that a leading member of Hezbollah, Ibrahim Qubaisi, head of Hezbollah’s rocket unit, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Beirut.

More details soon …

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Six people were killed and 15 injured by Israel’s strike on Dahiyeh in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said on Tuesday afternoon, as search and rescue operations continued.

Israeli media has reported the strike was targeting a senior Hezbollah commander.

More details soon …

Here are some pictures of the scene in Beirut, where Israel has carried out what it described as a “targeted strike” believed to be aimed at a senior Hezbollah commander. Local news sources report that rescue teams are attempting to reach civilians inside the building.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reports rescue teams are on the scene of an Israeli strike in the Beirut suburbs. The state news agency writes:

A number of people were injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a six-story residential building in the Ghobeiry area in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The National News Agency correspondent reported the airstrike destroyed three floors of an inhabited residential building, and rescue teams are trying to reach civilians in the building.

In an operational update Israel’s air force has said that it has dropped nearly 2,000 weapons on Lebanon in the last 24 hours.

Israeli media is reporting that the target of the strike in Beirut was the head of Hezbollah’s missile unit.

More details soon …

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Videos from the strike site appear to show crowds of people gathered in a rubble-filled street in Beirut. One video shows a severely damaged body lying on the roof of a car, in what appears to be someone who was ejected from the building by the airstrike. “This is the aggression of Israel. This is Israel! Don’t you see what they are doing to us? Despite all of this, we will wipe them from the earth” a man screams in the video, amid the sound of people calling for one another through the smoke.

Reuters reports that at least one person has been killed in an Israeli strike on a southern suburb of Beirut, which security sources indicate was targeting a senior Hezbollah commander.

More details soon …

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Israel carried out an airstrike in Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday afternoon – the second day in a row and third time this week it struck at Lebanon’s capital city.

Reuters, quoting security sources, said that a leader in Hezbollah was targeted by the strike. The strike hit the top floor of an apartment building in the Ghobeiri neighbourhood, with videos and pictures of the strike showing a collapsed roof with a large smoke cloud billowing from it.

Yesterday, Israel carried out what it said was a targeted strike in Dahieh as well, targeting the third-in-command of Hezbollah’s military wing, Ali Karaki. Hezbollah said in a statement that Karaki had survived the blast.

The mayor of Sidon, Hazem Khader Badieh, has said that 10,000 refugees from the south of Lebanon spent the night in the city, with 6,000 of them in cities. He said the number of schools opening as shelters increased from four to “about 16.”

Lebanon’s National News Agency quoted Badieh saying that international agencies need to “urgently extend a helping hand and provide the necessary supplies for the displaced, especially since a number of schools need maintenance and the provision of drinking water, electricity, and other necessary things.”

There are some indications that the strike on Beirut that Israel just announced was intended to take out a senior Hezbollah figure. Itay Blumental, who is a military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 11, posted a picture purporting to be the targeted building, with a note that “A security official tells me that the attack target in Beirut is a ‘man’s target’ – that is, the assassination of a senior official.”

Security sources in Lebanon, meanwhile, have told Reuters that the target was “a Hezbollah commander” whose “fate was not immediately clear”.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has said that its jets have carried out a targeted strike in Beirut.

Sky news reports that John Healey, the British defence secretary, will chair an emergency meeting on the Middle East.