Israel says it's launched preemptive strikes towards Southern Lebanon in what it called self-defense, after saying it had identified a planned attack by the militant group Hezbolar to fire rockets into Israel. In return, Hezbolar launched drones and missiles towards Israel in what they say was to avenge the killing of one of their top military commanders last month. Well, warnings sirens sounded in Northern Israel, and explosions were heard as the military's Iron Dome aerial defense system system shot down missiles. Israel's military has confirmed the group had planned an extensive attack.

A short while ago, the IDF identified Hezbala terrorist organization preparing to fire missiles, rockets towards Israeli territory. In a self-defense act to remove these threats, the IDF is striking terror targets in Lebanon from which Hezbala was planning to launch their attacks on Israeli civilians. This follows more 6,700 rockets, missiles, and explosive UAVs fired by Hezbala at Israeli families, homes, and communities since October eighth. Hezbala will soon fire rockets and possibly missiles and UAVs towards Israeli territory. We will shortly update the Home Front Command Defensive Guidelines for those in Israel. From right next to the homes of Lebanese civilians in the south of Lebanon, We can see that Hezbala is preparing to launch an extensive attack on Israel while endangering the Lebanese civilians. We warn the civilians located in the areas where Hezbala is operating to move out of harm's away immediately for their own safety. Hezbala's ongoing aggression risks dragging the people of Lebanon, the people of Israel, and the whole region into a wider escalation. Israel will not tolerate Hezbala's attacks on our civilians. We are operating in self-defense from Hezbala and any other enemy that joins in their attacks against us. And we are ready to do everything, everything we need to defend the people of Israel.

Well, let's cross the region now. We can speak to our international correspondent, Alex Rossi, who's in Beirut for us this morning, and to our Middle East correspondent, Alastair Bunkle, who's in Jerusalem. Good morning to both of you. Alastair, to you, first of all, just how clear a picture do we now have of exactly what happened last night?

Well, it's becoming a bit clearer that both sides are playing what happened to their own narrative, to their own advantage. Let me speak for the Israeli side, because I'm sure Alex will have more to add on the Lebanese side of things, but also because I've had a briefing from the IDF this morning, and they say that around 100 of their fighter jets at around 4:30 AM this morning took out thousands of launch sites across 40 particular targets, predominantly in Southern Lebanon, but also elsewhere in Lebanon. I think there were reports of airstrikes in the Becker Valley, for example, further north into Lebanon. Now, they did this because they say they had intelligence, and they won't go into detail, but they had intelligence that Hamas, Hezbolar, sorry, was about to launch thousands of rockets and drones into, particularly, Northern Israel, but central Israel as well. Probably, they haven't confirmed it, but probably Tel Aviv, and all in response for the killing of Fouad Shukr, a very senior Hezbolar commander that the Israelis killed in a drone strike in Beirut about three and a half weeks ago. The Israeli side of the story this morning is that they had good intelligence.

This massive attack was about to happen. They acted and they thwarted it. They say that the Two 150 to 300 drones and missiles that Hezbolar did launch in Israel caused, in their words, very little damage, although that damage assessment is still going on. There is now a meeting going on of the Israeli Security cabinet. They will also do their own assessment. They will consider what the next step is. And there'll be two schools of thought there. There'll be one, which I'm sure it will be what the Americans are also saying to them. You knew this was coming, you were prepared for it, and you thwarted it by and large, and very little damage was caused. Almost take that as the win, a bit like Biden said to Netanyahu back in April when Iran attacked. But there'll be those also, particularly the far right, in Netanyahu's government, who will say, We've got to go into Lebanon, or at the very least, we've got to take offensive action now, and we've got to go at Hezbolar. Hezbolar have said that this was phase one, don't let them get to phase two. That will be one of the dilemmas.

There'll be lots, but that'll be one of the considerations that the Netanyahu government will be weighing up. And then the other backdrop to it is you've got ceasefire talks due to start again, high-level ceasefire talks in Cairo later on today. Nobody's expecting any major development from them, but that is all part of the context of what is going on here.

And Alex Rossi, to you in Beirut, Hezbollah has said this strike was phase one in retaliation for the killing of that military commander. So what do you think we can expect next from where you are?

Well, I think that is a really, really good question. I don't think anybody apart from Hassan Nasrallah and senior people within Hezbollah, really know the answer to that. Certainly, they're talking about this being a phase one. Part of Nasrallah's strategy has been to keep up the temperature of psychological warfare against the Israelis, to try and keep them guessing. We certainly think that for today, this is over. The There will be no more attacks. We've actually heard in the last few minutes from Hassan Nasrallah's spokesperson saying that Israel didn't disrupt an attack at all, and what Hezbollah has done today was actually successful. You'll have basically twin narratives from the Israeli side, them saying their superior intelligence enabled them to launch a preemptive strike. Israel itself has suffered very little damage, and they managed to take out or blunt the spear that Hezbollah Hezbollah was pointing at the Jewish state. Hezbollah, for their part, will say, Well, this was a successful operation to avenge the assassination of their senior commander, and that they succeeded in doing that. Now, Hassan Nasrallah is likely to echo those sentiments later. He's due to speak sometime, we think this afternoon in Lebanon.

But of course, the danger is that this cycle of escalation continues and gets much worse. As Ali was saying, there will be people within the Israeli government who will say, actually, the time now is really to take the offensive to Hezbollah, push them back from the border so that our people can move back into those communities in the north of the country back to their homes. But the fear is, of course, you would have the possibility of igniting a much bigger war rather than the low-level war we've seen between Hezbollah and Israel since October the eighth, and trading fire almost on a daily basis. So that's the big danger at the moment. I think the other big question, of course, is where this leads the ceasefire talks. It may be that this round of fighting is over. The Americans have been trying to present an optimistic face despite officials around the talks being fairly negative that they will have a breakthrough, but perhaps it will move in that direction. And of course, if we saw a ceasefire in Gaza, that would take the sting Out of a lot of what we have seen so far, Hezbollah has claimed since this began that it has launched these attacks on Israel in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.

If the fighting there stops, you could see an end to the fighting on the northern border and a resumption of some calm. That said, the red lines that were drawn after 2006, the war that was fought between Israel and Lebanon, they have been completely destroyed. At some point, that deterrent is going to have to be restored on both sides. The question is, will it be restored diplomatically or will it have to be restored by a larger outbreak of violence? We don't know the answer to that question yet.