Escalation of violence comes as US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, begins five-day tour of region
• Middle East crisis – live updates
Hezbollah has fired multiple salvoes of rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel as a “preliminary response” to the killing of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut last week in an attack widely attributed to Israel.
The escalation of violence on the disputed frontier between Lebanon and Israel came as Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, began a five-day tour of the region aimed at calming tensions that threaten to start a wider conflict across the Middle East.
