Middle East crisis live: Air raid sirens sound in Tel Aviv after Hezbollah claims to have targeted Israeli city

Air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after Hezbollah said it bombed the Nirit area in the city’s suburbs with missiles.

The Israeli military said about 20 rockets were fired in the latest barrage from Lebanon – five toward central Israel and 15 toward the north, and that attempts were made to intercept them. The IDF said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Interceptor fragments fell in the northern Israeli town of Ma’agan Michael, causing damage to a building as well as vehicles, Israeli media reported, citing police.

Hezbollah said it targeted the Glilot base of the military intelligence unit 8200 located in the suburbs of Tel Aviv with a missile salvo. It also said it targeted a naval base near Haifa.

Videos verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency showed smoke rising near the Beit Aryeh settlement located north of the occupied West Bank and east of Tel Aviv after sirens sounded in three settlements in the West Bank.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

Air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, said it bombed the Nirit area in the city’s suburbs with missiles.

The Israeli military said about 20 rockets were fired in the latest barrage from Lebanon – five toward central Israel and 15 toward the north, and that attempts were made to intercept them. Police added that there are reports of interceptor fragments falling in the Tel Aviv area. Israeli media said there were no immediate reports of injuries.

It comes as Antony Blinken is due to arrive in Israel on Tuesday, on the first stop of a wider Middle East tour aimed at jumpstarting Gaza ceasefire talks after the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week.

Blinken will also discuss with Israel and other countries how to secure a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah, and continue Washington’s conversation with the Israelis about their expected response to Iran’s missile attack, according to reports.

In Lebanon, Israel rained more than a dozen strikes Monday night on Beirut’s southern suburbs. It was the second night in a row that Beirut was heavily bombed, with Israel carrying out more than 15 airstrikes on Hezbollah-linked banking institutions the night before. While most districts of Beirut’s southern suburbs had been emptied for almost a month, at least three of Monday’s strikes hit the densely packed residential area of Ouzai that was still filled with people because it had not been previously targeted before.

At least four people were killed, including a child, and 24 were injured when one of the Israeli airstrikes hit just in front of the entrance of the Rafik Hariri university hospital, the largest public hospital in Lebanon.

Israel’s military spokesperson said a bunker containing “millions of dollars in gold and cash” was located directly under the Sahel hospital, serving as a central financial facility for Hezbollah, and adding that it had also been previously used as a hideout for the former Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, did not provide evidence but instead showed animated graphics that purported to show a bunker under the hospital.

Fadi Alame, the hospital’s director who is also a Lebanese lawmaker, said Israel’s allegations were baseless.

“The hospital has operation rooms, there are no tunnels, no bunkers. This is all pure imagination,” Alame told CNN, while inviting the Lebanese army, the UN and journalists to inspect the hospital themselves to disprove the Israeli statements.

In other developments:

• Israel said late Monday it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against a Hezbollah-run financial institution that it targeted the night before and which it says uses customers’ deposits to finance attacks against Israel. At least 15 branches of Al-Qard Al-Hasan were hit late Sunday in the southern neighbourhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa valley, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-story building in Beirut with a branch inside it.

• There were reports that dozens of Palestinians, including children, were killed in attacks carried out by Israeli soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip. Among the casualties were at least 10 people killed in an Israeli attack on Jabalia Preparatory School in Al-Fawqa area, which was functioning as an Unrwa shelter for displaced people, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

• Joe Biden’s administration remains “deeply concerned” about the leak of a pair of highly classified intelligence documents describing Israel’s preparations for a retaliatory strike on Iran, the White House has said. There is no indication that additional documents have been compromised and US officials have been in communication with Israeli counterparts about the leak, a spokesperson said.

• Iran warned the US would bear “full responsibility” in case of a retaliatory attack by Israel on the Islamic Republic, after US president Joe Biden indicated he was aware of Israeli plans to do so. Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, called Biden’s remarks “profoundly alarming and provocative”.

• The UN warned Monday that almost no aid is entering the besieged Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where a two-week Israeli military campaign has killed hundreds of people and left thousands trapped.

• The heads of the United Nations World Food Programme and UN children’s agency Unicef, Catherine Russell and Cindy McCain, have privately appealed to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for help “alleviating the suffering of countless civilians” in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, according to a new letter.

• Up to 1,000 women and children needing medical care will shortly be evacuated from Gaza to Europe, the head of the World Health Organization’s Europe branch said. Israel, which is besieging the war-devastated Palestinian territory, “is committed to 1,000 more medical evacuations within the next months to the European Union,” Hans Kluge said.

• The US military has rushed its advanced anti-missile system to Israel and it is now “in place”, defence secretary Lloyd Austin said. THAAD, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is a critical part of the US military’s layered air defence systems and adds to Israel’s already formidable anti-missile defences.