Middle East crisis live: Israel conducts strikes on ‘terror targets’ in southern Lebanon | Israel

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Citizens in Lebanon’s capital city Beirut and other areas of the country have received text messages asking them to immediately evacuate their residences.

Lebanon’s Minister of Information, Ziad Makari, said that he received a call in which he was asked to evacuate the building, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Monday morning

The calls comes as Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee, claimed that Hezbollah has hidden missiles and other weaponry across south Lebanon, and urged citizens to leave their homes if they lived near Hezbollah members or infrastructure.

“Very soon, we will attack terrorist targets in Lebanon to stop these threats. I call for Lebanese citizens that live in homes or near homes that Hezbollah hides weapons in to evacuate them immediately,” Adraee said in a video message on Monday morning.

In Beirut, drones could be heard flying low over the city.

Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant has told the Israeli public they must “stay calm, disciplined and fully compliant with the home front command’s instructions” in the coming days as Israel expands its military operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Haaretz reports that Israel’s home front command issued emergency guidelines on Sunday for residents of the Jezreel Valley and northern regions which included shutting educational establoshments, closing beaches, and limiting public gatherings. Workplaces can stay in operation if they have designated protection areas.

Israel’s military has warned residents of southern Lebanon to flee prior to imminent airstrikes which Israel claims are targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.

Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson Avichay Adraee has posted a video warning residents of villages in southern Lebanon that they should evacuate before imminent airstrikes from Israel’s military.

In the message, Adraee said people should leave homes where weapons are hidden, saying that Hezbollah “is lying to you and sacrificing you” and that “missiles and drones are more valuable and important to [Hezbollah] than you.”

There have also been reports, via Reuters, that some residents have been receiving calls, purporting to be from a Lebanese number, warning them to move further than 1km away from Hezbollah infrastructure.

Earlier Israeli military spokesperson Rr Adm Daniel Hagari said the IDF would be conducting “extensive, precise strikes, against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon.”

He added “We advise civilians from 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.”

Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has posted to social media to say that overnight he spoke with US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin.

Gallant, whose position in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has recently been the subject of much speculation, said he “provided the secretary with a situation assessment of Hezbollah threats” and briefed him on “IDF operations to degrade Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks against Israeli civilians.”

Gallant added that the pair “also discussed the wider regional situation and the threats posed by Iran and its proxies.”

The US has held the position that it was not briefed in advance on the detail of the suspected Israeli sabotage attack last week which blew up pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, killing dozens and injuring thousands of people.

While Israel has not commented on whether it carried out the attacks, in a video posted overnight Gallant said the past week had been “the most painful of Hezbollah’s existence” citing what he described as the “significant, precise and successful operations” of the IDF.

Netanyahu’s defense minister said Israel’s goal was to return people to their homes in northern Israel. Thousands of people in northern Israel and southern Lebanon have been forced to evacuate due to the near constant exchanges of fire between Israel and anti-Israeli forces in the area since 7 October.

Lebanon’s state-owned national news agency has reported that Israel launched airstrikes against multiple locations in southern Lebanon, and that at least one person has been killed and six have been wounded. It reports that among those hit a shepherd was killed, and two of his family were wounded, and that four people were transferred to hospital.

The Israeli military has 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.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Israel began striking Hezbollah posts in Lebanon after identifying an intention to fire on Israel. 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 near areas used by the militant group in the country’s south to evacuate.

The strikes come 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.