The number of people killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday has risen significantly to 37 with 69 wounded as several children and women among the dead.
This was confirmed by Lebanese officials who say rescuers searched through the rubble after a high-rise building collapsed and others were partially destroyed in the attack.
Excavators were brought in to help clear the debris as medical staff surveyed the scene and people waited for news of those who were still missing.
A senior UN official, Rosemary Di Carlo, warned that the Middle East was at risk of a conflict that could "dwarf" the devastation witnessed in the region so far.
Reacting to the attack, the Lebanese health minister, Dr Firass Abiad, says it was a violation of international humanitarian law and the fact is that those children and those women who were killed were not members of Hezbollah but were civilians that happened to be nearby.
Israel's military issued an update on Friday's strike in southern Lebanon, saying it had killed a dozen senior commanders in Hezbollah's elite Radwan force.
In what it described as a "precise strike", the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says those targeted in Beirut had been meeting in Dahieh, a known stronghold of the Iran-backed group in the Lebanese capital.
[Source: BBC News]
