Israel says it has hit 1,300 targets in escalating conflict with Hezbollah, as tens of thousands flee their homes

At least 492 people have been killed and 1,645 injured, Lebanon’s health ministry has said, after a wave of Israeli airstrikes on alleged Hezbollah targets that left the country with its highest daily death toll since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

Tens of thousands of people fled from south Lebanese towns and villages along the main road towards the capital, Beirut, in Israel’s most intense barrage in nearly a year of cross-border clashes, as sirens were also heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. The Lebanese health ministry said 35 children and 58 women were among those killed.

Both sides engage in significant escalation in conflict, prompting UN to say region is on ‘brink of imminent catastrophe’

Hezbollah has said it has entered an “open-ended battle of reckoning” with Israel after launching a series of rocket attacks on the north of the country as world powers implored both sides to step back from the brink of all-out war.

In a significant escalation of the conflict, Israeli warplanes carried out their most intense bombardment in almost a year across southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah responded with its deepest rocket attacks into Israel since the start of the Gaza war.

Israeli military says its jets targeted hundreds of Hezbollah sites, while Hezbollah says it launched dozens of missiles at an airbase in northern Israel

• Middle East crisis - latest news

The Israeli military says it has launched airstrikes on hundreds of targets in southern Lebanon, as Hezbollah launched its deepest rocket attacks into Israel since the start of the Gaza war, prompting a UN official to warn of “imminent catastrophe” in the region.

Fighting reached its most intense yet overnight, with Israel launching a wave of attacks that it said targeted Hezbollah missile launchers across Lebanon’s south. At least one person was killed and another injured in the strikes, the Lebanese ministry of health said.

IDF airstrike on Beirut that killed at least 14 causes fears of escalation into even more devastating conflict

• Middle East crisis live: latest updates

Further violence between Israel and Iran’s allies Hezbollah and Hamas could ignite a devastating regional conflict, the United Nations has warned, after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed at least 14 people including a senior Hezbollah leader and wounded 66.

The strike killed Ibrahim Aqil, a figure on the group’s top military council who was wanted by the US for his alleged connection with the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut.

Aqil, who has reportedly been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, had risen through the ranks of the organisation

• Middle East crisis – latest news updates

Ibrahim Aqil, who is reported to have been killed by an airstrike in Beirut on Friday, was one of the last founder members of Hezbollah’s military wing to have survived more than 40 years of conflict with Israel.

Aqil, who was in his early 60s, had risen through the ranks and reached a senior position in the organisation. Exact details of his role are unclear, but the Israel Defense Forces described him as “the head of the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s operations team, the acting commander of the Radwan [special forces] unit”.

On Tuesday, dozens of people were killed when electronic pagers blew up. The next day walkie-talkies exploded. What was the goal of the attacks? William Christou reports

On Tuesday, William Christou, a journalist reporting from Beirut for the Guardian, began hearing about simultaneous explosions across the city. Then videos began to emerge of small blasts in shops, cars and people’s homes. The death toll began to rise. Then came the extraordinary reason: electronic pagers, used by members of Hezbollah to communicate, had blown up, wounding their owners and whoever was nearby.

Israel was blamed by its critics and supporters alike and questions multiplied: how could such an attack have been carried out, and why now? Israel and Hezbollah have been trading attacks over the Lebanese border since the beginning of the war on Gaza, but this operation took everyone by surprise. Then came more deadly explosions – this time walkie-talkies blew up.

Hassan Nasrallah due to give televised speech, as US warns all sides in Middle East against escalation ‘of any kind’

• Middle East crisis – latest news updates

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will seek to rally his followers and inspire new defiance of Israel in a much-anticipated televised speech on Thursday afternoon, after the Lebanon-based militant Islamist organisation was thrown into disarray by successive waves of unprecedented attacks that have been blamed on Israel.

On Tuesday, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously, killing 12 people, including two children, and wounding up to 2,800 others across Lebanon. A day later, 25 people were killed and more than 450 wounded when walkie-talkies exploded in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals, stoking fears that a full-blown war between Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and Israel could be imminent.