Thursday 4 July 2024 10:35, UK
Militant group Hezbollah has said it has fired 200 rockets into Israel in one of its largest barrages yet.
The Iran-backed organisation claimed it launched the attack on seven Israeli military sites using a "squadron of drones".
Tensions have been boiling around the border between Israel and Lebanon in recent weeks.
The Israeli military said that "numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets" had entered its territory, many of which it said were intercepted. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The barrage of rockets is in retaliation for a strike that killed one of Hezbollah's senior commanders.
Israel's military acknowledged on Wednesday that it had killed Mohammad Naameh Nasser, who headed one of Hezbollah's three regional divisions in southern Lebanon, a day earlier.
Hours after the acknowledgement, Hezbollah launched scores of Katyusha rockets and Falaq rockets with heavy warheads into northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The US and France are continuing to scramble to prevent the skirmishes from spiraling into an all-out war, which they fear could spillover across the Arab world.
The tensions between Israel and Lebanon erupted shortly after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group.
The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.
In Lebanon, more than 450 peoplemostly fighters but also dozens of civilianshave been killed.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
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