Middle East crisis live: Israel launches major strikes on Lebanon as White House says diplomacy ‘urgent’

The president and founder of the Taiwanese pager company linked to pagers used by Hezbollah has been questioned by prosecutors and released, as the hunt for the origins of devices that detonated across Lebanon this week spreads across the globe.

Gold Apollo’s president, Hsu Ching-kuang, has said his company did not manufacture the pagers used in the attack on Tuesday, and that they were made by a Budapest-based company BAC which has a licence to use its brand.

He was questioned in Taiwan on the same day that Icom, a Japanese communication equipment maker whose walkie-talkies are thought to have been detonated in a second wave of attacks on Wednesday, said the units used may have been a discontinued model containing modified batteries.

In Taiwan, Hsu declined to answer reporters questions as he left a Taipei prosecutors office late on Thursday. Taipei prosecutors have not issued any statements so far about their investigations into Gold Apollo.

Taiwan’s government has said it is investigating what happened and police have made several visits to Hsu’s company, in a small, unassuming office in Taipei’s next door city of New Taipei.

On Friday morning Taiwan’s minister of economic affairs said he could say “with certainty” that the components used in the pagers were not made in Taiwan.

US officials are privately saying they don’t expect a Israel-Gaza ceasefire to take place during President Joe Biden’s term, which ends in January, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

“No deal is imminent,” one of the US officials quoted by the paper said. “I’m not sure it ever gets done.”

“There’s no chance now of it happening,” an official from an Arab country told the paper shortly after the Israeli pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah this week. “Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode until after the election. The outcome will determine what can happen in the next administration.”

While saying it is pushing for a ceasefire the US has continued to supply Israel with billions of dollars worth of bombs and other weapons since 7 October, when the war was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel. It has also provided diplomatic cover for Israel at the UN security council, where it has vetoed multiple resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused by his own negotiators of sabotaging ceasefire talks because it would collapse his coalition, which relies on the support of far-right allies who want to continue the war, and leave him facing a long-delayed trial on allegations of corruption.

Most recently Netanyahu has been accused of claiming that Israel must retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, which runs between Gaza and Egypt, in order to ensure Israeli security in a bid to stall the talks. The Israeli military itself has dismissed his claim.

Despite this, the WSJ claimed that negotiations were stalling for two main reasons: one major sticking point was the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages who would be released it said, while the other was that “Hamas makes demands and then refuses to say ‘yes’ after the US and Israel accept them”. It was not possible to independently verify the paper’s claims.

Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon late on Thursday, hours after Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, threatened “tough retribution and just punishment” for the wave of attacks that targeted the organisation with explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies.

The Israeli military said it had hit hundreds of rocket launchers which it said were about to be used “in the immediate future”.

The bombardment included more than 52 strikes across southern Lebanon, the country’s state news agency NNA said. Three Lebanese security sources told the Reuters news agency that they were the heaviest aerial strikes since the conflict began in October.

As Israeli jets roared over Beirut in a show of force earlier in the day, Nasrallah threatened retribution against Israel “where it expects it and where it does not”.

As tensions in the Middle East spiralled, senior diplomats from the US, Britain, Germany, France and Italy met on Thursday in Paris before a UN security council meeting planned for Friday. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was to join his counterparts in the French capital after discussing the possibility of a Gaza truce in Cairo.

US President Joe Biden believes there can still be a diplomatic resolution to escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, his spokesperson said.

The White House warned all sides against “an escalation of any kind”.

The Lebanese foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, warned that the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.

Israeli warplanes carried out late on Thursday their most intense strikes on southern Lebanon in nearly a year of war, heightening the conflict between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah amid calls for restraint.

The White House said a diplomatic solution was “achievable” and “urgent”, and Britain called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The US is “afraid and concerned about potential escalation,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing.

The intense barrage followed attacks earlier in the week attributed by Lebanon and Hezbollah to Israel that blew up Hezbollah radios and pagers, killing 37 people and wounding about 3,000 in Lebanon.

In Thursday’s late operation, Israel’s military said its jets over two hours struck hundreds of multiple-rocket-launcher barrels in southern Lebanon that were set to be fired immediately toward Israel.

The bombardment included more than 52 strikes across southern Lebanon after 9pm, Lebanon’s state news agency NNA said. Three Lebanese security sources said these were the heaviest aerial strikes since the conflict began in October.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. More on that soon. In other developments:

• The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened Israel with “tough retribution and just punishment” after the unprecedented wave of attacks that targeted the organisation this week. In a televised speech on Thursday, Nasrallah admitted the attacks had been a major blow and threatened retribution against Israel “where it expects it and where it does not”. Israel will face “a crushing response from the axis of resistance”, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Cmdr Hossein Salami told Nasrallah, state media reported.

• In his speech, Nasrallah vowed to continue the conflict with Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza was reached. “The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops”, despite “all this blood spilt”, he said. In response, Hamas said it “highly appreciates” Hezbollah’s support.

• As Nasrallah made his televised remarks, Israeli jets roared over Beirut in a show of force. Late on Thursday, Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon, in some of the most intense bombing since the start of the war in October. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its fighter jets struck more than 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon in the space of a few hours.

• Eight people were reported to have been injured by antitank missiles fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel, and two were hurt in a drone attack. Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israel since Hamas’s 7 October attacks sparked the war in Gaza. The IDF said two of its soldiers were killed by Hezbollah strikes across the Lebanon border on Thursday.

• Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said Israeli military operations “will continue”, adding that there are “significant opportunities, but also heavy risks” as the country enters a “new phase” of the war. “Our goal is to return the residents of the north to their homes safely. As time goes by, Hezbollah will pay an increasing price,” Gallant said on Thursday.

• The speech by the Hezbollah leader on Thursday came amid fears that a full-blown war between Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and Israel could be imminent. Thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously on Tuesday, killing 12 people, including two children, and wounding up to 2,800 others across Lebanon. A day later, 25 people were killed and more than 450 wounded when walkie-talkies exploded in supermarkets, on streets and at funerals. There was no comment from Israel.

• Senior diplomats from the US, Britain, Germany, France and Italy met on Thursday in Paris before a UN security council meeting planned for Friday as tensions in the Middle East spiralled. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urged against “escalatory actions by any party” in the Middle East and called for restraint, while France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, said France and the US were “very worried about the situation” in the Middle East.

• The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. “We are all very, very clear that we want to see a negotiated political settlement so that Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel and indeed Lebanese to return to their homes,” Lammy said on Thursday. He urged British nationals in Lebanon to leave the country “while commercial options remain.”

• Explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in Lebanon “seriously disrupted” the country’s fragile health sector, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said. Lebanese authorities on Thursday banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport.

• The communications devices that exploded in Lebanon were implanted with explosives before arriving into the country, according to a preliminary investigation by Lebanese authorities. Lebanese authorities determined that the devices were detonated by sending electronic messages to the devices, according to a letter sent by the Lebanese mission to the UN to the UN’s security council.

• Six Palestinians were killed and 18 others injured on Thursday by Israeli forces during a military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Qabatiya, the governor of the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank told Reuters. In a statement to AFP, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an air strike killed militants in Qabatiya “as part of a counterterrorism operation”.

• UN children’s rights experts have accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza had “catastrophic consequences” on children in the Palestinian territory.

• A senior Israeli adviser has presented a new proposed ceasefire deal with Hamas to the Biden administration, according to reports. The proposal from Gal Hirsch, a close ally to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would see a permanent end to the conflict in Gaza, the release in one stage of all hostages held there in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and the safe passage for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to be exiled out of Gaza, according to reports.