Middle East crisis live: Israel launches more strikes on Beirut as six people reported dead from earlier attack | Israel

The Israeli military claims 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 Israel Defence Forces (IDF) also said in the post in Hebrew (translated to English) on X that “with them other commanders and terrorists of Hezbollah were eliminated”.

The IDF also posted that Muhammad Ali Ismail “is responsible for many acts of terrorism from his sector towards the territory of the state of Israel”, including launching rockets towards Israel and launching a surface-to-surface missile towards the centre of the country last Wednesday.

The IDF said:

Their assassination joins the assassination of the head of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket array, the terrorist Ibrahim Muhammad Kabisi, and the assassination of other senior officials in Hezbollah’s missile and rocket array.

It was not possible to verify the IDF’s claims.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Israel’s military conducted strikes early on Saturday in the south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, after ordering residents to evacuate and warning 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”. “In the coming hours we are going to strike strategic capability that Hezbollah placed underground, under three buildings in the heart of the Dahiyeh,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters late on Friday.

• Earlier on Friday, Israel’s military said it struck the central headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut in its heaviest air attack on Beirut in almost a year of conflict with the Lebanese militant group. Six loud explosions were heard across the Lebanese capital late on Friday afternoon. A number of buildings in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh were levelled. Residents of Dahiyeh and a nearby Palestinian refugee camp, Burj al-Barajneh, fled the area following the strikes.

• Israeli media reported the strike on Beirut as an attempt to kill Hezbollah’s leader and key Iran ally, Hassan Nasrallah. Other media outlets quoted Hezbollah sources saying he was “alive and well”. Hezbollah issued a statement saying there was “no truth to any statement” about the Israeli attack, without specifying what statements it was referring to. IDF spokesperson Hagari said it was still looking into the results of its strike, but that it was “very accurate”.

• At least six people were killed and 91 others were injured by the Israeli strike on Beirut on Friday, according to the Lebanese health ministry, who cautioned that the death toll would likely rise. Some early estimates put the number of dead at 300. More casualties are expected as rescue workers clear rubble.

• Hezbollah responded 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 militant group announced more attacks at Karmiel and Sa’ar, but did not put out a statement regarding the fate of Nasrallah. Israel braced itself for potential retaliation from Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as from Yemen and Iran, urging residents of Golan Heights, Safed, Merom HaGalil, to stay near protected areas.

• Video of the Israeli strikes on Beirut suggested they were carried out with ground-penetrating munitions known as bunker busters. In some footage, a vertical jet of flame was visible as a bomb appeared to explode beneath the ground.

• Joe Biden, the US president, has directed the Pentagon to “assess and adjust as necessary” American forces in the Middle East, the White House said after a wave of Israeli strikes in Beirut on Friday. Biden earlier on Friday said the US had “no knowledge of or participation” in the massive Israeli airstrike in Beirut. 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.

• Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said Israel’s objective in Lebanon is an “important and legitimate one”. Blinken, at a news conference on Friday, said the US and other countries who have joined calls for a 21-day ceasefire believe that diplomacy and a ceasefire is the best way forward.

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

• The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, reiterated his call for a ceasefire in the Middle East. Guterres said; “Gaza remains the epicentre of violence, and Gaza is the key to ending it”. He added: “The death spiral must end for Gaza, for the people of Palestine and Israel, for the region and for the world.”

• Even if he was not harmed in the strike, targeting Nasrallah would mark a staggering escalation on the Israeli side. The Hezbollah leader represents Iran’s most important regional asset and has long been seen as linchpin in the so-called axis of resistance. The presence of Hezbollah’s large rocket arsenal on Israel’s northern border has long acted as a deterrent to an Israeli attack on Iran and its nuclear programme.

• Iran’s embassy in Beirut said the airstrike represented “a dangerous game-changing escalation that changes the rules of the game” and warned that its perpetrator would be “punished appropriately”. Najib Mikati, the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon, said the Israeli attack on Beirut shows that Israel “does not care” about global calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

• Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip shot and killed an aid worker from a US based charity, firing on her car in what government officials told her family was a case of mistaken identity. The car in which Islam Hijazi, Gaza programme manager at Heal Palestine, was travelling was intercepted on Thursday in the area of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.