Hello and welcome to Newshour from the BBC World Service coming live from London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

Israel's overnight strikes on Hezbollah targets were rapidly answered with Hezbollah rocket and

drone attacks on targets in Israel.

So what now?

What are the risks of a wider conflict?

The longstanding leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrula has spoken on TV saying, among other things,

that a military intelligence and surveillance base close to Tel Aviv was targeted in response

to last month's assassination of a top Hezbollah commander. He also denied the

Israeli claim that Hezbollah had been planning a far bigger attack, he said Hezbollah had achieved its goal.

They claimed that the resistance wanted to fire 8,000 drones. Then they said it was roughly 6,000 and that they had

intercepted and destroyed all of them. This is a false claim. We only intended to launch 300 missiles during this operation,

but we launched 340 demonstrating that nothing was thwarted and that all we planned

was carried out and we even accomplished

more. So that's the Hezbollah take on what happened. What about Israel? This is what

the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to say he was addressing his

ministers during a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv.

We're hitting Hezbollah where they don't expect it. Three weeks ago we eliminated their chief of staff and today we foiled their offensive plan, Nasrala in Beirut and

Chaminininay in Tehran Tehran should know that this is another step on the way to changing the situation in the north and returning our citizens safely to their homes.

And I repeat, this is not the end of the story.

Not the end of the story, he says.

Well, I've also been hearing from Ohad Tal,

...