Live Updates: Israel Strikes Beirut Suburbs After Effort to Kill Hezbollah Leader

Early Saturday, after warning residents to flee, Israeli forces launched a series of new airstrikes in the same, Hezbollah-dominated area known as the Dahiya. Israel’s military said the strikes were intended to destroy Hezbollah weapons caches.

Killing Mr. Nasrallah would be a major escalation in Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign against Hezbollah over the last two weeks, which has threatened to spiral into an all-out regional war. Fears have grown that Hezbollah’s backer, Iran, might be drawn into the fight.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least six people were killed and more than 90 injured by the Israeli strikes on Friday evening, but the toll was expected to rise. Emergency workers were still searching through the rubble even as Israel struck again.

Here’s what else to know:

• U.N. speech: Shortly before the strikes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel gave a defiant speech at the U.N. General Assembly, vowing to continue the fight against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon despite international calls for a cease-fire.

• White House: President Biden was receiving regular updates on the latest developments in the Middle East.

• Emergency departures: Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, will cut short his meetings at the U.N. General Assembly to return to Beirut. Mr. Netanyahu returned to Israel on Friday evening, the Jewish Sabbath, a highly unusual move.

• Iran’s ire: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council on Friday night. Ibrahim Azizi, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said that Israel “has opened the gates of hell against itself.”

Earlier in the night, Israel’s military had pointed to three other buildings in the Dahiya, a densely packed civilian area near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. Soon after, explosions rocked the general area, lighting up the night sky with fiery flashes.

Those strikes were in addition to earlier blasts that Israel’s military said had targeted Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, believed to be in a leadership meeting in the group’s underground headquarters.

Some of the evacuation warnings were confusing, because the maps accompanying social media posts showed a much smaller area than the 500-meter radius specified by the military surrounding the buildings they said housed Hezbollah interests.

Earlier this week, the Israeli military sent out messages to Beirut radio stations and some cellphones, warning of coming attacks in Arabic-language messages. Those alerts were followed by more than 1,000 Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, in the deadliest single day of attacks in decades.

“The I.D.F. don’t want to hurt you. If you are present in a building used by Hezbollah, you should leave,” the automated messages said, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces.

All four of the destroyed structures were residential buildings along the same street. Two neighboring apartment buildings that were at least seven stories tall were hit. About 100 yards away, two neighboring buildings that were also at least seven stories were also hit.

Footage recorded on top of the debris of a flattened building also shows significant damage to several surrounding buildings. The blasts tore the facades off the lower floors and blew out many of the windows. The strikes destroyed nearby vehicles and left craters in the streets about 700 feet away.

A video filmed during the strikes and posted on the social media app Telegram showed several distinct smoke plumes. An enormous cloud of smoke rose from the area of the four destroyed buildings identified by The Times, and one large plume of smoke rose from areas slightly to the east of the buildings. Multiple additional explosions can be heard and seen in the video.

The extent of the damage from the strikes was not yet clear.

Five other Israeli officials told The New York Times that Israeli intelligence agencies’ initial assessment is that Mr. Nasrallah has been killed. But they cautioned that assessment was preliminary and might yet change.

Mr. Nasrallah is a singular figure who over the course of his 32 years leading Hezbollah has been fixated on building up the group, with the help of Iran, to destroy Israel, the first official said. His death, the official added, could deal a decisive blow to the group’s political and military organization in Lebanon, and to any further plans for violence by Iran.

Israel assessed that the strikes this week in Lebanon, which killed hundreds of people, had destroyed about half of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile capacity, the official said. It was impossible to independently confirm the official’s assertion.

The militant group has amassed an enormous arsenal over many years with the help of Iran.

Fears have grown after the strikes on Friday that Iran and its militia proxies could be drawn into the fight and further destabilize the Middle East. The Israeli official urged the U.S. government to stand firmly alongside Israel in order to present a united front for deterrence.

On Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned that the choices countries made in the coming days would shape the region.

“The events of the past week, and the past few hours, underscore what a precarious moment this is for the Middle East and the world,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in New York after a week of diplomacy at the U.N. General Assembly. “Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism. The way it does so matters.”

A second senior Israeli official said in the same briefing with reporters that Israel had never told U.S. officials that it would agree anytime soon to a cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. He said there had been a misunderstanding between officials from the two countries after initial discussions on Monday that led to the White House’s announcement of a 21-day cease-fire proposal supported by France and other European nations, along with Arab countries, on Wednesday night.

That Israeli official said they had expected those countries to present a cease-fire proposal as a starting point for rounds of discussions, and that important conditions had not been worked out, such as how Iran would be prevented from sending more rockets and missiles to Hezbollah during those 21 days to replace the destroyed arms.

American officials have told reporters since Wednesday that the Biden administration would not have put forward the proposal if they had not gotten signals in private talks with Israeli officials that Israel would agree quickly to the cease-fire proposal.

“The most important thing to do through diplomacy is to try first to stop firing in both directions, and then to use the time that we would have in such a cease-fire to see if we can reach a broader diplomatic agreement,” Mr. Blinken said on Friday at the news conference.

Since the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel last October, Hezbollah has been launching rockets and missiles into northern Israel in support of its ally, forcing about 60,000 Israelis to leave their homes. Israel has retaliated with attacks mostly in southern Lebanon, in turn forcing tens of thousands of residents there to flee.

The first Israeli official in the briefing said Israel must not allow Hezbollah or any other hostile force to set a precedent of forcing Israelis to permanently abandon parts of the country. Israel now has the advantage and momentum in Lebanon, the official said, and should keep acting forcefully to capitalize on that.

Ronen Bergman contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.

Based on that information, and based on the large amount of ordnance fired at the site, including weapons designed to destroy bunkers, and the intelligence gathered from inside Hezbollah since the attack, the initial assessment of Israeli intelligence agencies is that Mr. Nasrallah has been killed, the officials said. But they cautioned that assessment was preliminary and may yet change.

Three of the officials said the government’s decision to strike was also based on political, strategic and other factors, not on intelligence alone. Israel has had intelligence on Mr. Nasrallah’s location before and has bypassed earlier opportunities to try to kill him, they said.

I can see smoke rising above the Beirut skyline from what appears to be a new explosion.