Streams of people flee Beirut amid airstrikes and evacuation orders
More on the Israeli strikes and evacuation orders in Lebanon here from the Guardian’s William Christou in Beirut:
Residents of the Lebanese capital were awoken by the sounds of about a dozen blasts at 3am on Monday, as Israel struck three locations in Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.
The explosions rocked windows around the capital and were heard from miles away. People in southern Lebanon heard warplanes and bombs being dropped as airstrikes were carried out over wide swathes of the south of the country, collapsing buildings in the villages near Tyre, southern Lebanon.
Israel carried out the heavy airstrikes on Beirut after the Iran-backed group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
An Israeli military spokesperson issued evacuation orders for 55 different villages and towns across Lebanon, asking people to get at least 1,000 metres away from them as they are near “Hezbollah operatives and facilities”.
Streams of people began to flee the Beirut suburb of Dahieh by car and by foot, and lines of cars began to form outside petrol stations in the southern city of Tyre as residents began to head northwards. The highways from Dahieh to the capital city were gridlocked with scooters and cars driving over rubble and debris from the earlier strikes.
In the south, people drove northwards on both sides of the highway to escape the traffic.
Videos showed the tops of buildings in Dahieh engulfed in flames, while burnt out husks of cars lay at the feet of the crumpled buildings. As they scrambled to flee, witnesses reported seeing rocket barrages flying from south Lebanon towards Israel.
See the full report here:
Key events
Kuwait has intercepted drones approaching the country and no injuries have been reported, the official Kuwait News Agency has said, citing the civil defence chief.
Brig Gen Mohammad Al-Mansouri said the reported audible explosions in some residential areas were from the drones being intercepted at dawn on Monday.
The report also said he assured the public that “the situation in the country remains stable” and that there was no cause for concern as authorities continued to monitor regional developments.
Iran’s security chief says it ‘won’t negotiate’ with US
Iran’s security chief has declared: “We will not negotiate with the United States.”
The social media post from Ali Larijani – who was a close loyalist and adviser to the country’s slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – came in response to reports that Iran is trying to revive negotiations with Washington.
Donald Trump said earlier that Iran’s new leadership wanted to talk to him and that he had agreed, according to an interview with the Atlantic.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” the US president said. “They should have done it sooner.”
At least 10 killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut – report
Israeli strikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut have left at least 10 people dead, according to a medical source quoted by Reuters just now.
The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, has said rocket attacks on Israel on Monday hurt his government’s efforts to spare Lebanon from a regional war.
“The launching of missiles from Lebanese territory this morning targets all the efforts and endeavours made by the Lebanese state to keep Lebanon away from the dangerous military confrontations taking place in the region,” Aoun said in a statement, cited by AFP.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah had earlier claimed responsibility for launching rocket and drone attacks on Israel on Monday in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth will hold a press conference on Monday morning about the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, the first by a senior Trump-administration official since strikes began on Saturday.
The press conference would be held at 8am local time (1300 GMT), the Pentagon said. Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, would also take part.
Hegseth will visit Congress on Tuesday with secretary of state Marco Rubio to brief lawmakers on the progress of the military operation, the White House said on Sunday.
Democrats in opposition have complained that they were not consulted before the operation began.
ABC News’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, has said Donald Trump told him the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, “but they were killed in the initial attack”.
Karl said Trump told him:
The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates … It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.
Pres Trump told me tonight the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told me. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because…
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 2, 2026
Trump previously told Fox News that 48 Iranian leaders had been killed in the first two days of bombing. Israel’s Channel 12 cited officials as saying the Israeli air force killed 30 high-ranking Iranian officials within the first 30 seconds of the attack.
Bahrain has said that one person was killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. The death of a foreign worker at Salman Industrial City, working on a boat there, marks the kingdom’s first reported fatality in the war.
Bahrain, home to the US navy’s 5th fleet, said it intercepted 61 missiles and 34 attack drones launched against it. It said some shrapnel had gotten through, striking buildings and the naval base.
Bahrain was among a number of Gulf states that vowed on Sunday to defend themselves against Iranian attacks, including by “responding to the aggression” if need be.
An Iraqi Shia militia group has claimed a drone attack that targeted US troops at the airport in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, further widening the retaliation over the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The group, Saraya Awliya al-Dam, is one of a group of Shia militias that has operated in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that toppled Saddam Hussein.
The attack comes as other Iranian-supported militias – including the Lebanese group Hezbollah – have entered the war.
The wires are carrying images of clogged roads as people flee Dahieh in Beirut, which has been targeted by Israel.
Streams of people flee Beirut amid airstrikes and evacuation orders
More on the Israeli strikes and evacuation orders in Lebanon here from the Guardian’s William Christou in Beirut:
Residents of the Lebanese capital were awoken by the sounds of about a dozen blasts at 3am on Monday, as Israel struck three locations in Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.
The explosions rocked windows around the capital and were heard from miles away. People in southern Lebanon heard warplanes and bombs being dropped as airstrikes were carried out over wide swathes of the south of the country, collapsing buildings in the villages near Tyre, southern Lebanon.
Israel carried out the heavy airstrikes on Beirut after the Iran-backed group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
An Israeli military spokesperson issued evacuation orders for 55 different villages and towns across Lebanon, asking people to get at least 1,000 metres away from them as they are near “Hezbollah operatives and facilities”.
Streams of people began to flee the Beirut suburb of Dahieh by car and by foot, and lines of cars began to form outside petrol stations in the southern city of Tyre as residents began to head northwards. The highways from Dahieh to the capital city were gridlocked with scooters and cars driving over rubble and debris from the earlier strikes.
In the south, people drove northwards on both sides of the highway to escape the traffic.
Videos showed the tops of buildings in Dahieh engulfed in flames, while burnt out husks of cars lay at the feet of the crumpled buildings. As they scrambled to flee, witnesses reported seeing rocket barrages flying from south Lebanon towards Israel.
See the full report here:
UK responding to suspected drone strike at Cyprus base, says MoD
British forces are responding to a suspected drone strike at its military base in Cyprus, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Monday, with no casualties reported.
The strike hit the Royal Air Force Akrotiri base at midnight, said the ministry, adding that its forces were handling a “live situation”.
“Our force protection in the region is at the highest level and the base has responded to defend our people,” an MoD spokesperson said in a statement.
Agence France-Presse also reports that the incident came as Britain agreed on Sunday to allow the US to use British military bases to fire “defensive” strikes aimed at destroying Iranian missiles and their launchers.
The RAF Akrotiri base is a British overseas territory near the southern coastal city of Limassol.
London recently deployed additional assets to the site as “defensive measures”, including air and drone defence systems, radars and F-35 aircraft.
While announcing that British bases can be used by US forces for defensive strikes, prime minister Keir Starmer stressed that Britain was “not involved in the initial strikes on Iran and we will not join offensive action now”.
“But Iran is pursuing a scorched-earth strategy, so we are supporting the collective self-defence of our allies and our people in the region,” he said on X.
Oil prices soared and stock markets came under pressure on Monday after intense US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted fears of significant global economic disruption, reports my colleague Callum Jones.
Brent crude jumped by as much as 13% during early trading – to hit $82 per barrel, a 14-month high – as the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz, one of the most important arteries for global trade, intensified concerns over oil supplies.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 fell by nearly 2.4% as traders in Asia responded to the weekend’s developments. It later pulled back, to trade down 1.5%. Pre-market trading also put Wall Street on course to open lower on Monday.
In Sydney the ASX 200 opened down sharply, before recovering, to trade about 0.4% lower. In Shanghai the CSI 300 fell 0.6%
Gold, often deemed a safe-haven asset by investors during times of crisis, rose 2.8% to $5,397.10 an ounce.
Here’s the full report from the deputy business editor of Guardian US:
The Israeli military has reportedly urged people in nearly 50 villages in Lebanon to evacuate.
It urged civilians in eastern and southern Lebanon on Monday to evacuate their homes and move at least 1,000 metres (1,100 yards) away from villages to open areas, the Associated Press is reporting.
The move came Israel’s military said early on Monday it was striking Hezbollah throughout Lebanon after the Iran-backed militant group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Hezbollah said on Sunday it had a “duty” to support its backer Iran after the Israeli and US strikes. But until Monday the group has not confirmed action since the US and Israel began attacks on Saturday.
The Israeli military has reportedly issued a wide evacuation order for several towns in Lebanon.
We’ll bring you more on this soon.
Israel has carried out heavy airstrikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut after the Iran-backed group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.
More than a dozen explosions shook Beirut on Monday, witnesses said, in the most intensive strikes on the southern suburbs since a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2024.
Lebanese security sources said airstrikes hit several areas of the southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, Reuters reports.
The Israeli military said it had begun striking Hezbollah targets across Lebanon and held Hezbollah responsible.
“Hezbollah opened a campaign against Israel overnight, and is fully responsible for any escalation,” the Israeli chief of the general staff, Eyal Zamir, said in a statement.
The projectiles launched by Hezbollah were the first since the start of US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Israel also carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, the Lebanese security sources said.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of events in the Middle East, which is reeling from the US-Israel war on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Israeli military said early on Monday it was striking Hezbollah across Lebanon, after the militant group launched missiles and drones towards Israel in retaliation for the killing of Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
The projectiles launched by the Lebanese militant group were the first since the start of US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
The Shia Muslim group, long one of Tehran’s principal allies in the Middle East, said it launched the attack against Israel in response to Israel killing Khamenei and continuous Israeli violations against Lebanon.
Explosions were heard in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, according to witnesses. Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Israel had struck the city’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
-
Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday after the US and Israel launched a war on the country to trigger regime change. Donald Trump announced the death of the ayatollah, who ruled Iran since 1989, in a post on Truth Social. Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also killed in strikes.
-
Trump warned on Sunday that combat operations in Iran were continuing and would carry on “until all of our objectives are achieved”. He continued to justify the operation, saying “an Iranian regime armed with long range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American … I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military police, to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.”
-
The US president told Fox News that 48 leaders have been killed in US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” Trump said. “Nobody can believe the success we’re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot.”
-
A suspected drone strike hit RAF Akrotiri – a UK base in Cyprus – the British Ministry of Defence confirmed. There were no casualties in the incident at the base. The suspected strike came hours after Keir Starmer said the UK had allowed the US to strike Iranian missile sites from British bases as officials plan an unprecedented rescue operation for UK citizens in the Gulf.
-
Oil prices have soared and stock markets came under pressure on Monday after the US-Israeli strikes on Iran prompted fears of significant global economic disruption. Brent crude jumped by as much as 13% during early trading – to hit $82 per barrel, a 14-month high – as the effective closure of the strait of Hormuz, one of the most important arteries for global trade, intensified concerns over oil supplies.
-
Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday. Trump warned in his Truth Social video that there would likely be more casualties.
-
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media. Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
-
Trump said earlier that Iran’s new leadership wanted to talk to him and that he had agreed, according to an interview with the Atlantic. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner,” he said.
-
Just 27% of Americans approve of the US strikes that killed Iran’s leader, while about half – including one in four Republicans – believe Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday.
-
The war led to major disruption to the airline industry and the plans of hundreds of thousands of travellers in the Middle East and beyond as countries across the region closed their airspace and three of the key airports that connect Europe, Africa and the west to Asia halted operations.