Loud explosions were heard in Beirut on Monday evening, as Lebanese state media reported strikes on the capital's southern suburbs after the Israeli military said it struck 70 Hezbollah targets.

AFP journalists heard loud blasts in the city. The state-run National News Agency said "enemy warplanes launched new raids on the southern suburbs".

Israel struck Lebanon on Monday as Iranian counterattacks hit Gulf states and a British base in Cyprus. International gas prices rose and shares went down.

Several strikes hit south and east Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation warnings. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad's armed wing said its commander in Lebanon was killed in the strikes.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said on Monday that its commander in Lebanon was killed in Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

In a statement, the Quds Brigades said Adham Adnan al-Othman, the head of the armed wing in Lebanon, was killed "as a result of the treacherous Zionist aggression that targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut, at dawn on Monday".

Hezbollah condemned on Monday the government's decision to ban its military activities, while Israel carried out retaliatory strikes in response to rockets fired by the Iran-backed group.

In a statement, Mohammad Raad, the head of the group's parliamentary bloc, condemned Beirut's "swaggering decisions", saying that "the Lebanese were expecting a decision rejecting the (Israeli) aggression".

The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran spread across the Middle East and beyond on Monday, with Lebanon's Hezbollah entering the fray and a British air base in Cyprus targeted.

The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon renewed its call for citizens to leave Lebanon immediately as the Middle East war expanded to Lebanon.

Several strikes hit Beirut's southern suburbs on Monday after Israeli evacuation warnings, as Israel attacked the country following Hezbollah's dawn missile launches.

The Israeli military said it killed the head of Hezbollah's intelligence services, Hussein Moukalled, in a strike in Dahieh overnight.

"The IDF now confirms that in a precise strike in Beirut last night (Sunday), the terrorist Hussein Moukalled, who served as the head of Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters, has been eliminated," the army said in a statement on Monday.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Monday that Israel would send Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem to "the bottom of hell" like Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after an attack by the Lebanese armed group.

"We will strike Hezbollah hard, and Naim Qassem, chairman of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, will discover that whoever follows Khamenei's path ends up like Khamenei -- at the bottom of hell," Katz said during a visit to the Israeli air force operations center.

Lebanon's government has decided on an "immediate ban" of Iran-backed Hezbollah's military and security activity, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Monday, in an unprecedented move as Israel retaliated to rocket fire.