Israel-Gaza-Lebanon updates: IDF orders evacuations in Beirut as huge blast hits city

Lebanese media and officials reported more than 30 airstrikes in southern Beirut overnight into Sunday, focused on Hezbollah's stronghold suburb of Dahiya.

A fuel storage site was ignited by strikes during the overnight attacks, causing a massive explosion.

The latest round of airstrikes are the latest in an intense bombing campaign unleashed Thursday, with new attacks on average every six hours. Another large airstrike hit Dahiya early Sunday morning.

The overnight strikes were the largest since Thursday, when Israel tried to kill Hashem Safieddine -- the chair of Hezbollah's executive council and considered the likely successor to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an airstrike in Dahiya on Sept. 27.

It is unclear whether Safieddine was killed in Thursday's attack. Reuters reported he has since been unreachable, citing multiple Lebanese sources.

Israel's airstrikes in southern Lebanon are even more intense than in the capital.

UNICEF on Sunday reported that 100 children have been killed in the past 11 days across the country, with nearly 700 injured. Lebanon's health ministry reports 23 people killed and 93 wounded on Saturday.

Israeli action has killed more than 2,000 people across Lebanon, according to Lebanese health officials.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell and Morgan Winsor

At least 26 people were killed in twin Israeli strikes on a mosque and school housing displaced people in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip early Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said.

Images of the aftermath showed dead bodies on the floor and in rubble, with ash covering survivors and rescuers trying to reach the injured. Pictures also showed victims being transferred to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

At least 150 people were injured and dozens are missing, the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defence said. Both sites are within an Israeli-designated "safe zone."

Forty-five more Palestinians were killed in strikes in other parts of the strip on Sunday, Hamas said.

Israel is intensifying its bombardment of the northern Gaza Strip and on Sunday issued an evacuation order for civilians there.

-ABC News’ Somayeh Malekian, Samy Zyara, Nasser Atta and Jordana Miller

The Israel Defense Forces ordered Palestinian civilians to evacuate northern Gaza early Sunday.

IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X that the northern region of the territory "is still considered a dangerous combat zone."

"The IDF will continue to operate forcefully against terrorist organizations wherever they operate within the Gaza Strip," he added.

The IDF later announced that its forces encircled the Jabaliya area in the northern strip overnight.

Aircraft "attacked dozens of military targets in aid of the maneuvering forces, including munitions warehouses, underground infrastructures, terrorist squads and other military infrastructures," it wrote on social media.

The IDF said it re-opened two evacuation routes out of the north of the strip -- one along the Salah al-Din Road and the other along the Al-Rashid coastal road.

The force also said it expanded the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in the northern part of the territory.

Civil defense crews in northern Gaza said they could not handle the overwhelming number of rescue calls Saturday night because of the intensity of the bombing and a lack of equipment.

The civil defense said multiple strikes -- focused particularly in Jabalia refugee camp -- have killed at least 14 people, with many more under the rubble and or not reached by rescue and recovery crews yet. They have not yet put a number to those killed at the UNRWA Jabalia Services Center which was struck, which houses displaced people.

Israel Defense Forces released a statement saying it had conducted a strike on a UNRWA center which they said Hamas militants were operating in.

"A short while ago, with the direction of IDF intelligence, the IAF conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside a command and control center in the area of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. The command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served as an UNRWA center, was used by the Hamas terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel," the IDF said.
"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information."

-ABC News' Samy Zyara