Israel has carried out a series of massive airstrikes overnight in the southern suburbs of Beirut. It had warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon that are outside a United Nations-declared buffer zone.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike led to the closure of the road near the busy Masnaa Border Crossing, from which tens of thousands of people fleeing war in Lebanon have crossed into Syria over the past two weeks.

Israeli strikes sealed off Lebanon's main border crossing with Syria early on Friday, hours after an intense Israeli attack on Beirut's southern suburbs that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to Hezbollah's slain secretary general.