Tracking the violence in Lebanon

After two weeks of attacks that Lebanese authorities say killed more than 1,000 people and forced up to a million to flee, Israel says it has launched an invasion of southern Lebanon.

The announcement of an Israeli ground operation against Hezbollah came four days after an airstrike that killed the Iranian-backed armed group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel has a decades-long history of conflict with Hezbollah, but the war in Gaza has sparked nearly a year of deadly cross-border fighting between them.

We will update this page as the dispute develops.

Lebanon is a small country with a population of about 5.5 million people, bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south and the Mediterranean to the west. It is about 170 km (105 miles) from Cyprus.

According to the BBC's Lucy Williamson, who is in northern Israel, Israeli troops and tanks that gathered near the border on Monday have now crossed into Lebanon – although it is currently unclear how far they have gotten.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was conducting “limited, localized and targeted ground attacks” against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah said the IDF's claims that Israeli forces had crossed the border were false and that so far there have been no clashes yet.

About a million people lived in southern Lebanon before the conflict escalated almost a year ago.

On Tuesday, the IDF issued evacuation orders for 25 villages in the region, calling on people still living there to leave their homes and “immediately go to the north of the Awali River,” about 50 km (30 miles) from the border distant on the coast meets Israel.

Lebanese civilians were also warned by the IDF not to travel south in vehicles across the Litani River, which is about 30 km (20 miles) north of the border.

A ground operation in southern Lebanon poses many risks for the Israeli armed forces. Unlike Gaza's flat coastal plains, southern Lebanon has rolling hills and some mountainous areas, making it difficult for tanks to move without fear of an ambush.

Hezbollah is also believed to have a network of tunnels in the region as the group has been preparing for another full-scale conflict with Israel since the 34-day war in 2006.

Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon comes after more than a week of intense air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in the country. Southern Lebanon was the hardest hit, with attacks also targeting the eastern Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Israel says it is attacking Hezbollah sites, including weapons depots and ammunition depots, but Lebanese officials say more than 100 women and children have been killed.

For Lebanese civilians seeking to flee southern Lebanon, the coastal road that stretches across the country is the main route north – but areas along this route have been targeted by airstrikes in recent days.

Hezbollah also continued to fire rockets into Israel, most of them targeting northern areas. The IDF says most were intercepted. Some rockets reached further south, damaging homes near the coastal city of Haifa.

Israeli attacks on Beirut were focused on Dahieh, a southern suburb, a densely populated area with thousands of civilians and a strong Hezbollah presence.