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00:00Let's go straight to live images we're getting at the moment of the Lebanese capital the
00:06capital of Lebanon here in Beirut in the last half-hour
00:10Explosions seen picked up on Reuters and live cameras what we've been told by the Israeli military is they are
00:16Targeting the central command of Hezbollah. This is on a day that they're already
00:23striking
00:24reporters our reporters and other teams seeing
00:27Low-flying Israeli aircraft. You can see the night's flashes of the sky at night some of these explosions
00:32We're going to be with our reporter in a moment Claire back alarm
00:36But at the same time it must be said just a few moments before
00:40We heard Benjamin Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister of concluding his speech a half an hour speech at the UN General
00:48Assembly in New York where he spoke about enough being enough
00:53That's
00:54Israeli civilians, he said 60,000 who are forced to flee the north would be able to go back
00:59Because they had to carry out a fight in full force. Let's try to
01:04Understand what's happened on pick the last hour or so. Let's start in New York
01:09Then we'll go to Jerusalem and to Beirut as well
01:12I
01:13Think I'm right in saying we can hear from
01:15Claire pack long our reporter in Jerusalem. First of all Claire great to have you on the program this evening
01:20As we're speaking we're showing images of Beirut the explosions this evening bring us up to date with the situation that you're
01:28hearing on the ground
01:32The Israel Defense Forces the IDF are
01:36Announcing a new wave of airstrikes on Lebanon, of course
01:40Also that includes the south of Beirut those images the IDF says that they have struck the central
01:47Headquarters of Hezbollah, which they said was embedded under
01:51Civilian buildings in Beirut. We're yet to get a response from Hezbollah or from Lebanon on that
01:57But that's the latest I can give you what we know. Is that the IDF has
02:02Significantly degraded Hezbollah particularly in the last week
02:06We saw those pager attacks the walkie-talkie attacks last week this bombing campaign
02:11we've had in the last few days, but in the last few months the IDF has been an and
02:17Israeli intelligence services have been knocking out the top brass of
02:20Hezbollah one by one that said Hezbollah is still capable of launching rockets and missiles and drones
02:27Into northern Israel and we've seen today
02:30large swathes of the north of Israel under alert from Haifa in the west all the way across to
02:36Lower Galilee the southern Golan lots of areas of Israel people are now
02:41Finding in the north of the country that they need to get close to a safe room to an air raid shelter
02:46Many of those rockets launched by Hezbollah are intercepted by Israel's defense system
02:51But even when they're intercepted
02:53Sometimes debris can fall to the ground and cause injuries to people and even some rockets do get through
02:58I was just two days ago in a kibbutz in the north of Israel in an area
03:03Which is the northwest not too far from the coast and we were there just a few minutes after a rocket
03:09landed in a building site near someone's home and injured three people so clearly this
03:16Escalating situation at the moment on this Friday evening is not showing any signs of easing up
03:22Claire just as we're talking these Reuters live images from Beirut just to give a sense of what's going on
03:28Explosions first heard and seen on camera on a fixed camera on the rooftops of the capital about 45 minutes ago
03:36What we know of the situation so you've been talking about the Israeli offensive on Monday
03:40The Lebanese authorities saying that it was the worst single deadly
03:45Death toll that they've had since 2006 since the conflict more than 500 people killed
03:51We have a situation in the south where there's been constant
03:55Airstrikes the Bekaa Valley in the east as well to which tens of thousands of people been fleeing the UN talking about up to
04:02200,000 people since the start of the conflict October the 8th is when the the crossfire
04:07Missile started with Hezbollah and Israel a day after the the Gaza
04:11Conflict began that's we are seeing on the roads
04:15Chaos people trying to get to the capital an economy already in tatters fragile economy hospitals full
04:21We're hearing reports of very difficult situation and now what we've been told from sources
04:27Israeli sources talking to Reuters six buildings have been flattened in the south of Beirut
04:33These are the smoke we can see burrowing from the south as we're speaking Claire the other points to to bring him
04:39I'm gonna go to New York in a short while as well and to hear from Jessica, Missouri on the speech that Benjamin Netanyahu
04:45who has been given from
04:47You've been watching that as well, and you've been talking and listening to military officials there
04:51There was despite the international pressure for a ceasefire this 21-day ceasefire
04:56There's certainly not rhetoric directly answering that from Benjamin Netanyahu today was there
05:03Well certainly the question on many people's minds now is will there be a ground offensive will Israel take its troops in
05:11To southern Lebanon, that's the big question here
05:14and we have the IDF announcing that it has two brigades which are
05:19Ready and in combat mode in the north of the country it it brought up two more
05:24Reserve brigades early in the week to the north of the country and they say that they are ready that an increasing
05:30State of readiness is how they describe the situation
05:33It is hard to imagine though the IDF beginning a ground offensive while the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is out of the country
05:40Of course, he's in New York at the moment
05:42We expect him back in Israel on Sunday in order to have a ground offensive launched in Lebanon
05:49The Israeli prime minister needs to get the backing of his cabinet and he would need to sign it off as well
05:54So it there are still steps to be taken. We're not there yet
05:59Certainly though those images of tens of thousands of Lebanese trying to flee to safety
06:05700 people killed in this week alone
06:08harrowing images and a very difficult circumstance for
06:11Lebanese people and the question now is will it escalate even further and will Israel launch a ground offensive?
06:18Israelis are divided on that some believe that it's necessary others fear for the lives and the risk to their troops because while Israel has
06:26air superiority
06:28Going in on the ground to Hezbollah territory is another story altogether
06:34Claire Pakelan, thank you our correspondent in Jerusalem