At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.

Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.

State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.

Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.

The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.

At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.

The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).

A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.

The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.

Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.

Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.

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US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.

Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.

According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.

It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.

In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.

“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”

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He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”

Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.

General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.

Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”

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Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.

NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.

EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’

Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.

At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.

Facing the threat of an attack from Russia, Sir Keir Starmer has finally revealed he will “set out the path” to raise defence spending to 2.5% of national income in the spring.

But merely offering a timeframe to reveal an even-further-off-in-the-future date for when expenditure will increase to a level most analysts agree is still woefully short of what is required is hardly the most convincing display of deterrence and overwhelming strength.

What the prime minister should perhaps instead be doing is making very clear to Vladimir Putin – with new NATO-wide military exercises and the immediate hardening of UK defences – that his government is prepared for any Russian strike and the devastating cost to Moscow would be so astronomical as to make even the thought of hitting a UK target utter madness.

A failure to relay back to the Kremlin a genuinely resilient and tough message, raises the risk that the Russian president will increasingly regard Britain as vulnerable – despite the UK being a nuclear power and a member of the NATO alliance.

It should come as a surprise to no one that Mr Putin has ramped up the rhetoric against Britain and the United States in the wake of both countries allowing Ukraine to fire their missiles inside Russia in the past few days.

In a series of blunt messages, he first lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, then fired what he has described as a new kind of intermediate-range, “unstoppable” missile and finally warned that he has lots more of them, signalling that British and American military sites could be targets.

The warning clearly means UK military bases and warships, at home and overseas, are at higher risk.

Yet there is little evidence that anything is being done to ramp up protection around them or signal publicly back to Russia in a meaningful way that such a move would not be wise.

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Asked whether any changes have been made to put the UK military on a higher state of alert, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “There has been no recent change to our general security posture across our bases in the UK or overseas.

“We constantly monitor the threats we face and our armed forces remain ready to protect the UK’s interests at home and abroad.”

There is also the inescapable – and well-known – fact that the UK lacks the ability to defend itself from large-scale missile attacks after decades of defence cuts.

It is a problem for all European NATO countries, but as Britain is the one that is being directly threatened by Moscow, then this absence of any kind of defensive shield should really be ringing very loud alarm bells.

The Russian leader has put his country on a war footing in the wake of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Defence spending in Russia is set to rise by a quarter next year to 6.3% of GDP – the highest level since the Cold War.

UK military chiefs and the defence minister point to the cost to Russia – in terms of the number of soldiers killed and injured in Ukraine and the burden of the war on the economy – as a sign that the Kremlin is struggling.

But that is surely only regarding the data through a peacetime lens, rather than reflecting on the fact that Russia appears willing and able to absorb the cost and still keep fighting.

Unless the UK and its NATO allies wake up to the need to put their countries on some kind of war footing too, then their ability to counter Russian aggression and deter threats may be lost.