How fresh chaos unfolded in the Middle East between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon

Tensions have been running especially high after the assassinations of high-profile terrorist targets in July

In the early hours of Sunday Aug 25 Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, launched more than 300 rockets into Israel. The group said the attack represented the “first phase” of its response to Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in Beirut in July.
Israel, which claimed to have struck first in an attempt to thwart Hezbollah’s large-scale attack, launched air strikes into Lebanon, hitting at least 31 villages mostly in the south of the country.
While Hezbollah and Israel have been trading cross-border fire since Oct 8 2023, tensions have been running especially high after the back-to-back assassinations of Shukr in Beirut and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, in Tehran in late July.
Here is a timeline of the key events, up to now.
Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel and killed 1,200 people. They murdered 364 people at a music festival and hauled hundreds of others out of their houses. The attackers also abducted 250 people, taking them back into Gaza as hostages.
Hezbollah fired rockets and artillery at the Shebaa Farms, a disputed patch of border territory, “in solidarity” with the Palestinian people after Israel began attacking Gaza. Israel has held the Farms, a 15 square mile stretch of land, since 1967, but both Syria and Lebanon claim the patch is Lebanese. 
“Our history, our guns and our rockets are with you,” Hasem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah official, said at an event in southern Beirut which was organised to show solidarity to Palestinian fighters.
Israel assassinated Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy leader of Hamas, in an air strike on an office block in southern Beirut. Six others were also killed, including high-ranking Hamas officers. Arouri had met Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, shortly after the Oct 7 attacks to discuss tactics for achieving a “real victory” in the war with Israel. 
Photographs circulated of the two men chatting underneath a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s supreme leader.
In response to Al-Arouri’s killing, Hezbollah fired 40 rockets at a military base in Northern Israel. While Hezbollah claimed to have caused casualties, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that there had been no injuries and launched retaliatory strikes into southern Lebanon.
The cross-border attacks and counter-attacks escalated when Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Baalbeck, more than 60 miles from the border. The IDF said that it had struck the group’s air defences.
Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people including three top Iranian commanders. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ elite al-Quds force, was among the dead. A consulate building inside the diplomatic compound was reduced to rubble.
Ayatollah Khamenei said Israel would be punished for the attack. In Lebanon, Hezbollah declared that the strike would be met with “punishment and revenge”.
Iran launched 300 drones and missiles into Israel – its first direct attack on the country. Israel intercepted nearly all of the drones, which were aimed at military sites. They caused little damage. One girl was injured. Analysts later said that the attack was probably a show of strength calibrated to avoid sparking a wider conflict.
A rocket struck a football field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights killing 12 teenagers and children. The strike took place in the Druze town of Majdal Shams and was the single deadliest attack on Israeli turf since Oct 7. Israel accused Hezbollah of launching the rocket. The group denied responsibility.
On the evening of July 30 an Israeli drone struck a residential block in Dahiyeh, a suburb of southern Beirut. The air strike killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah official, along with four others including two children. The IDF said the attack was a response to the Golan Heights strike and that Shukr was the target of an “intelligence-based elimination”.
Just seven hours after Shukr’s assassination in Beirut, Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s senior leaders and a key player in the ceasefire talks, was killed in Tehran after an explosive device was hidden in his hotel room. These two killings, both attributed to Israel, sparked fears of full-scale regional war as both Iran and Hezbollah vowed to retaliate.
A strike on a factory in the town of Toul in southern Lebanon killed 10 civilians, representing one of the highest death tolls since Hezbollah and Israel started exchanging cross-border fire in October 2023. Israel claimed it was targeting a weapons depot used by Hezbollah.