Israel-Hezbollah live updates: Netanyahu orders 'full force' in Lebanon despite U.S. cease-fire push

Israel says it is launching strikes on Beirut, following a new wave of strikes on southern Lebanon this morning. Days of attacks have killed more than 600 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Israel’s ability to assassinate senior Hezbollah officials shows that the group is “exposed to Israeli intelligence to an unprecedented level.” That’s according to Filippo Dionigi, an international relations scholar and Hezbollah specialist at England’s University of Bristol. Israel has taken out numerous high-ranking Hezbollah figures, including the chief of its elite Radwan forces, Ibrahim Aqil, and some of his deputies. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said this week that the strikes have left Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah isolated. This “certainly has an impact” on the group’s “morale and partly on their capacity to operate under the stress of constant surveillance from the enemy,” Dionigi told NBC News. However, the 40-year-old organization “has had all the time to recruit and train new generations of fighters.” “This means that ‘decapitating’ the military leadership of Hezbollah will have an impact that is more limited compared to younger and less long-lasting organizations, such as Islamic State, for example,” he added. “Hezbollah is likely to have sufficient trained personnel to replace its losses.”

Israeli fighter jets struck an area along the Syria-Lebanon border that the IDF said was being used by Hezbollah as a route to transfer weapons. Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh told news agency Reuters that the Israeli strike hit the Syrian side of a small bridge that crossed into Lebanon. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was killed or injured in the strike. The United Nations refugee agency has warned of a mounting humanitarian crisis at the border between Lebanon and Syria, as some of the tens of thousands of dispalced people escaping Israeli airstrikes amassed there. Hundreds have been killed by the strikes in recent days.Video and photos shared by the agency showed roadways filled with vehicles, their rooftops loaded with bedding and other possessions. Crowds of others, including children, arrived at the border on foot. UNHCR said many arrived after fleeing "dire conditions, with some carrying nothing but plastic bags filled with their belongings." "Today we have seen literally thousands of families of Syrian and also Lebanese crossing into Syria, UNHCR representative Gonzalo Vargas Llosa said, speaking from the Syrian side of the border in a video shared online last night. "They are fleeing the escalating violence in Lebanon," he said. Many of the Syrians now seeking refuge in their home country are people who have already been displaced by a brutal conflict — survivors of Syria's own ongoing civil war, which began in 2011. Now, they find themselves returning, displaced once again by the threat of violence.

“It is yet another ordeal for families who previously fled war in Syria only now to be bombed in the country where they sought shelter," said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees in a statement shared by UNHCR. "We must avoid replaying these scenes of despair and devastation. The Middle East cannot afford a new displacement crisis. Let us not create one by forcing more people to abandon their homes. Protecting civilian lives must be the priority.”