Further attacks have been reported across the Middle East as the war enters a second month, with one UN peacekeeper killed in Lebanon on Sunday and another seriously injured. On the diplomatic front, the UN has announced a taskforce to restore the flow of fertilizer and aid through the Strait of Hormuz, while the UN’s atomic watchdog confirms an attack on a heavy water facility at Khondab in Iran. Stay with us for live updates on this and UN agencies. App users can follow coverage here.

Just like Hezbollah’s surviving leaders, their patrons in Iran also wanted a ceasefire. Hezbollah needs a pause to lick its wounds. Iran needs to stop the geostrategic bleeding. Its axis of resistance is no longer a deterrent. Iran’s missile attack on Israel after Nasrallah’s assassination did not repair the damage.

Two men, both now assassinated, designed Hezbollah to deter Israel not just from attacking Lebanon – but also from attacking Iran. They were Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who was killed by an American drone strike at Baghdad airport in January 2020. The order was issued by Donald Trump in his last few weeks in the White House at the end of his first term. The other was Hassan Nasrallah, killed by a huge Israeli air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Hezbollah and Iran’s deterrence strategy matched Israel’s own deterrence for almost 20 years after the end of the 2006 war. But among the profound changes caused by the 7th October attacks was Israel’s determination not to accept restrictions on the wars it would wage in response. America, its most important ally, also put almost no restrictions on the supply or use of the weapons it kept on providing.

Nasrallah and Iran failed to see what had happened. They did not understand how Israel had changed. They sought to impose a war of attrition on Israel, and succeeded for almost a year. Then on 17th September Israel broke out of it by triggering the miniature bombs built into the network of booby-trapped pagers its intelligence services had duped Hezbollah into buying.

Hezbollah was thrown off balance. Before it could react with the most powerful weapons Iran had provided, Israel killed Nasrallah and most of his key lieutenants, accompanied by massive strikes that destroyed arms dumps. That was followed by an invasion of South Lebanon and the wholesale destruction of Lebanese border villages as well as Hezbollah’s tunnel network.

Israel issued evacuation orders for parts of Beirut four hours before the ceasefire deadline, striking around an hour before. Hezbollah also fired drones into Israel in the hours before fighting stopped.

Within minutes of the ceasefire starting, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned residents of southern Lebanon against “heading towards the villages that the IDF has ordered to be evacuated or towards IDF forces in the area”.

The IDF’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X the IDF would “inform you when it is safe to return home”.

Still, dozens of vehicles were seen heading south shortly after the ceasefire began by reporters for the Reuters news agency, some packed with personal belongings.

Fighting had been ongoing for nearly a year when, in late September, Israel intensified bombardments and launched a limited ground invasion against Hezbollah.

The war has been Lebanon’s deadliest in decades, killing more than 3,823 people, according to local officials.

Under the deal announced on Tuesday and brokered by the US, Israel will gradually withdraw its troops from Lebanon’s south over a 60-day period.

Over the same timeframe, Hezbollah fighters and weapons will be removed from the area south of the Litani River, a boundary established at the end of the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. They will be replaced by Lebanese government forces.

“This announcement will create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes,” said a joint statement from the US and France, both of which will join an existing mechanism tasked with enforcing the UN resolution previously set at the end of the 2006 war.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the ceasefire deal, calling it a “fundamental step towards restoring calm and stability” in the country and allowing citizens to return home.

But he also demanded Israel “fully comply” with the deal, leave sites it currently occupies and to respect the UN resolution.

The agreement largely tracks UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Under resolution 1701, areas south of the Litani should be free of any armed personnel or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and the UN peacekeeping force (Unifil).

But both sides claimed violations of the resolution.

Israel says Hezbollah was allowed to build extensive infrastructure in the area, while Lebanon says Israel’s violations included military flights over its territory.

This time, the US and France will join the existing tripartite mechanism, which involves Unifil, Lebanon and Israel, which will be charged with monitoring violations, the senior US official said.

“There will be no US combat troops in the area, but there will be military support for the Lebanese Armed Forces, as we’ve done in the past. But in this case, it’ll be typically done with the Lebanese army and in conjunction with the French military as well,” the official said.

Alluding to Israeli concerns, Biden said: “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon will not be allowed to be rebuilt.”

On Wednesday, Israeli public broadcaster Kan published what it said was a draft agreement, written by Washington and dated Saturday, for an initial 60-day ceasefire.

Israel would withdraw its forces from Lebanon within the first week of the deal, and the Lebanese army would be deployed along the border. During the pause, Hezbollah would end its armed presence in the area.

The objective is to pave the way for the full implementation of United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

The text, among other things, called for the removal of all armed groups, including Hezbollah, from the area south of the Litani River, 30km (20 miles) north of the border. Only the UN peacekeeping force known as Unifll and the Lebanese army would be allowed there.

Israel, however, distrustful that the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers will be able to keep Hezbollah away from the border, reportedly wants to be given the right to strike the group if needed after the end of the war. This demand is likely to be rejected by the Lebanese authorities, who say there should be no changes to Resolution 1701.

When asked about the document reported by Kan, White House national security spokesperson Sean Savett said there were “many reports and drafts circulating” that “do not reflect the current state of negotiations”. He did not, however, respond to a question about whether that text was the basis for further talks.

Hezbollah, a powerful militia and political party which is armed and financially supported by Iran, faces domestic pressure for a deal, particularly from critics who say the group dragged Lebanon into a conflict which was not in the country’s interests.

Israel’s bombardments have killed most of the Hezbollah leadership, including long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah, and brought extensive destruction to areas of southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group holds sway.

The group started its campaign the day after the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October last year, and has long said its attacks will continue unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza. It is not clear whether it would be willing to change its position.

Video footage posted on social media over the weekend showed widespread and significant destruction in Dahieh, with multi-storey buildings reduced to rubble.

A senior member of staff at the Al Rassoul Al-Azam hospital, one of the few remaining emergency healthcare facilities in Dahieh, which sits just150 metres from Dr Diab’s destroyed clinic, told the BBC that the hospital had reverberated with nearby strikes over the weekend.

The member of staff, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the situation at the hospital, said that it was operating at a severely limited capacity and had been receiving seriously wounded patients from strikes, including people with traumatic head and chest injuries.

Air strikes on the Dahieh area continued into the day on Sunday, and appeared to be intensifying ahead of an expected retaliation by Israel against Iran in the coming days.

Dr Diab’s voice caught in her throat when she described the neighbourhood around her clinic before the bombing began. “This area was always busy – schools, shops, clinics, there was traffic, people walking, life everywhere,” she said.

She opened her clinic with the dream that her daughters would one day work there with her. All three went to medical school, and the eldest, newly graduated, had just joined her staff before the clinic was destroyed.

That dream was now on hold, probably for some time. But not dead. “I will go back to Dahieh and work with my daughters,” she said.

Joanna Mazjoub contributed to this report.

Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah reached new heights as Israeli forces launched a series of strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, while the Iran-backed group responded with retaliatory attacks on Israeli military facilities. These developments are raising fears of a wider regional conflict, only a day after Lebanon witnessed its deadliest violence in decades, leaving nearly 500 people dead.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Tuesday that they had targeted dozens of Hezbollah positions, escalating the conflict between the two arch-foes along Israel’s northern frontier. Hezbollah responded swiftly, claiming responsibility for multiple attacks on Israeli military facilities, including an explosives factory located deep inside Israeli territory and the Megiddo airfield near the town of Afula. The scale and intensity of the attacks have heightened fears of a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, which could potentially involve other regional players like Iran and the United States.

Deadliest Day for Lebanon in Decades

Lebanese authorities have reported that Monday’s Israeli airstrikes claimed the lives of at least 492 people, including 35 children, marking Lebanon’s highest daily death toll since the end of its brutal civil war (1975-1990). The Lebanese Health Ministry added that 1,645 people were injured, and tens of thousands of residents in southern Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes.

The most affected areas were in Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, where Israeli jets and artillery targeted rocket launchers, command posts, and other militant infrastructure. Hezbollah, in turn, launched multiple rocket barrages into northern Israel, aiming to destabilize the region further and force Israel to spread its military resources across multiple fronts.

Hezbollah Strikes Deep into Israel

Hezbollah’s rocket attacks early on Tuesday included strikes on the Megiddo airfield and an explosives factory located approximately 60 kilometers inside Israeli territory. The group, which is backed by Iran and boasts a well-trained and heavily armed militia, claimed it used “Fadi” rockets in the attacks, a new weapon in its arsenal. These strikes mark a significant escalation as they show Hezbollah’s capability to hit deeper into Israeli territory than before, signaling a shift in tactics.

The IDF responded by striking Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon with artillery and airstrikes, while also issuing warnings to Lebanese civilians to evacuate areas where Hezbollah stores weapons. The northern Israeli region remains under a heightened state of alert, with residents being advised to seek shelter from ongoing rocket fire.

Lebanon on the Brink

Lebanon, already grappling with a protracted economic crisis, is now facing the possibility of renewed large-scale conflict. The country’s infrastructure remains in shambles following years of political deadlock and mismanagement, and this new wave of violence could exacerbate the humanitarian disaster.

Nasser Yassin, Lebanon’s minister responsible for crisis response, said that temporary shelters have been established in schools and other public buildings to accommodate the thousands of people displaced by the fighting. “We have set up 89 shelters with a capacity for over 26,000 people, but the situation is worsening,” Yassin told local media, adding that the government is scrambling to respond to “Israeli atrocities.”

Many Lebanese civilians are fleeing en masse from southern Lebanon to avoid the escalating airstrikes. Convoys of cars, trucks, and buses carrying families, including children and the elderly, were seen heading north. Highways are gridlocked as citizens try to escape the violence, reminiscent of past conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah.

The increasing violence has drawn international concern, with world leaders fearing the potential for a broader regional conflict. Hezbollah’s involvement is directly tied to Iran, which backs the group financially and militarily, and has proxies across the region, including the Houthis in Yemen and various militias in Iraq. Should the conflict spread, it risks engulfing other parts of the Middle East.

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced he would fly to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly in the hopes of rallying international support. His office stated that Mikati aims to initiate “further contacts” with world leaders regarding the deteriorating security situation in Lebanon. However, Lebanon’s internal divisions and its fragmented government have hampered its ability to respond effectively to the crisis.

The United States, a close ally of Israel, has expressed concern over the potential for the conflict to spread beyond Lebanon and Israel’s borders. U.S. officials have warned of the risks posed by the regional influence of Iran, which continues to back both Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah’s recent attacks are seen by many analysts as a gesture of solidarity with Hamas, which has been engaged in its own war against Israel from the south for nearly a year.

G7 Warns of Middle East Escalation

Amid these mounting tensions, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries issued a stark warning about the situation. After meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, they released a joint statement emphasizing that the conflict risks dragging the broader Middle East into an all-out war that would benefit no party. “The Middle East is on the edge of a broader conflict that could lead to devastating consequences for all involved,” the statement said, urging restraint from all sides.

Despite international pleas for de-escalation, the likelihood of further violence looms large. Israel is under significant domestic pressure to secure its northern borders and protect its citizens from Hezbollah rocket fire. There is speculation that Israel may consider a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, a move reminiscent of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Such a step would dramatically increase the scale of the conflict, potentially involving more of Lebanon’s infrastructure and turning Beirut’s southern suburbs into a battlefield.

Israel’s Technological Edge

Israel’s advanced technological capabilities have long given it the upper hand in its conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. The IDF has been successful in tracking and neutralizing high-profile targets, including senior Hezbollah commanders and key Hamas leaders, using sophisticated intelligence-gathering techniques and precision strikes.

In the past week, Israel has been accused of carrying out a covert operation that severely crippled Hezbollah’s communication capabilities. Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters were destroyed in what Lebanese sources called “the worst security breach” in the group’s history. While Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement, such incidents underline Israel’s intelligence and military prowess.

However, the northern front presents a formidable challenge for Israel. Unlike Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is a highly disciplined and well-equipped military force, with years of experience fighting Israel. Created in 1982 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah’s forces are considered better trained and better armed than their Palestinian counterparts.

Public Pressure on Israel’s Government

Domestically, the Israeli government faces mounting pressure to deal decisively with the threat from Hezbollah. The ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza, which erupted almost a year ago, has placed a continuous strain on Israeli resources, and the northern front with Hezbollah now demands urgent attention.

Residents of northern Israel, who have been living under the constant threat of rocket attacks, are demanding action from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to bring security and stability to the region. There is a growing consensus among military experts that the conflict may not be resolved without a broader military campaign in southern Lebanon.

Despite these pressures, an all-out ground invasion of Lebanon remains a last resort for Israel, given the potential for massive casualties and the risk of drawing more regional powers into the conflict. As tensions rise, all eyes remain on whether diplomatic channels can prevent the situation from spiraling into a larger war.

The recent flare-up in violence between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to ignite a broader regional conflict that could engulf not just Lebanon and Israel, but also involve Iran, the United States, and other regional actors. The humanitarian toll in Lebanon, already reeling from economic collapse, is devastating, and the potential for further bloodshed remains high. The international community faces an urgent challenge to intervene diplomatically before the conflict spirals out of control. For now, the fate of Lebanon and Israel remains uncertain, with the risk of wider regional destabilization growing by the hour.

But Givat Avni is 20 miles (30km) from the Lebanese border, far from the evacuation zone established by the authorities almost a year ago.

An hour later, as we arrived at nearby Kibbutz Lavi, home for the past year to families evacuated from further north, sirens sounded once more.

Rockets appeared in the sky overhead and as we were ushered into an underground shelter full of children and their artwork, we heard a series of deep resonant booms.

An hour later, more alerts, another safe room and more distant explosions.

Hezbollah had been firing rockets further into Israel, even before the latest escalation. But now an even larger swathe of northern Israel is in the firing line.

All of this is adding a sense of urgency to the government’s actions.

Speaking after a meeting with defence chiefs, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel was changing the balance of power in the north.

“We are facing complex days,” he warned.

“We do not wait for a threat,” he said. “We anticipate it. Anywhere, in any arena, at any time. We eliminate senior officials, eliminate terrorists, eliminate missiles.”

Having seized the initiative, Israel’s military seems determined to keep Hezbollah on the back foot, in the hope of realising the government’s aim of returning civilians to homes evacuated along the northern border.

On Monday morning, it stepped up another gear, telling Lebanese villagers to leave places where they believe Hezbollah is concealing its bigger weapons.

Military officials showed journalists a video of an air strike in which Israel says it destroyed a modified Russian cruise missile, hidden inside a house.

In another “illustration”, we were shown a skeletal 3D mock-up of a village in southern Lebanon, full of concealed weapons and equipment.

The mock-up, and the instructions to civilians to leave, all carried echoes of Israel’s efforts to explain its actions in Gaza.

But military officials insist that, unlike Gaza, the warnings do not mean that the army is poised to move in on the ground in southern Lebanon.

“We are currently focusing on Israel’s aerial campaign only,” a senior official said on Monday.

It seems that for now, Israel will see what it can achieve from the air. A former commander, speaking on Israel’s Channel 12, said that so far, the air force had shown only a fraction of its capabilities.

But there’s only so much Israel can achieve from the air, even if, as seems possible, jets are about to lay waste to entire villages.

At some point, a ground invasion – however limited – seems unavoidable.

At the University of Haifa, less than 50km (30 miles) from Israel’s border with Lebanon, they’re taking no chances.

The morning after a rocket fell on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers, the university authorities announced that all staff based above the fifth floor in the 30-storey building should work from home. The fear is growing that they’re in the line of fire from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“In the last war with Hezbollah in 2006, their weapons reached Haifa”, Esther Parpara, a member of staff from the university told me. “This is a dangerous moment. Parents are helping police and guards to patrol kindergartens. I’m avoiding crowded places. We don’t seek war – but Hezbollah want to destroy Israel and the Jewish people, so can we just let them do that without defending ourselves?”

Cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon has grown steadily since 8 October, when Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli sites in solidarity with the Hamas attack on Israel a day earlier. Both groups call for the destruction of the Israeli state.

Frequent attacks by Hezbollah have struck northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Israel has launched air strikes and missiles into southern Lebanon and beyond, including an overnight wave of attacks apparently in response to the rocket fire on Saturday.

The tit-for-tat strikes since October have killed more than 450 people in Lebanon – around 100 of them civilians – while Israel says 23 civilians and 17 soldiers have been killed. The skirmishes had been relatively contained, suggesting both sides were aiming to avoid a head-on confrontation.

Mapping destruction on Israel-Lebanon border

But now the question is how far Israel will go in response to Saturday’s tragedy, the biggest single loss of life in the cross-border attacks since October.

Thousands lined the streets of the town to mourn the young victims, holding flowers and photos as they crowded beside the small white coffins. Hezbollah says it did not fire the deadly rocket, but the Israeli government insists that’s a lie. Following the strike, the Lebanese militants are said to have pre-emptively cleared out some key sites in the south of the country and the eastern Bekaa valley in the anticipation of a large-scale Israeli attack.

Israel’s prime minister returned early from the US to chair a security cabinet meeting, amid calls to hit back hard. Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Hezbollah will “pay a heavy price which it has not paid up to now”.

Israel Katz, the foreign minister, said Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, should “pay with his head”, while the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned Israel was approaching all-out war with Hezbollah.

Huge amounts of land have been burnt in both countries, but the BBC estimates that Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been hit hardest, with around 55 sq km (21 sq miles) of land affected, compared to 40 sq km for Lebanon.

Some recent estimates by Israel’s Nature and Park Authority have put this figure as high as 87 sq km.

The pattern of damage shows that many of the areas burnt are set back from the border, which reflects the use of large numbers of unguided weapons by Hezbollah. These have been fired at civilian areas and military bases which aren’t immediately next to the frontier. If Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome system detects that missiles will not land in populated areas, it does not intercept, leaving the missiles to land in the open.

It results in extensive damage to agricultural land, farmland and forests. Dr Ozcelik said that’s intentional on the part of Hezbollah.

“You could attribute the fires to the types of weapons that are being used but part of that story is that Hezbollah seeks to create chaos and a level of insecurity among the Israeli population which creates a pressure point on the Israeli government.”

The scale of evacuation is “unheard of in the Israeli context,” Dr Ozcelik added.

The scale of the damage is illustrated by images of the settlement of Katzrin in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A huge swathe of burnt land, larger than the settlement itself, appeared after a barrage of rocket fire in early June.