Officers from the UK Border Force are rushing to help trapped Britons flee Lebanon as Israel is preparing for a ground invasion.

It comes as Hezbollah leaders reportedly told Iran to launch the attack as revenge for the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The United States, France and several allies called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Israel-Lebanon border at a United Nations meeting in New York.

A senior Biden administration official said the ceasefire would apply to the Israel-Lebanon "Blue Line," the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel, and would allow the parties to negotiate towards a potential diplomatic resolution of the conflict.

A man reacts at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon

The Israeli army called up two brigades of reservists, around 4,000 soldiers, for operations on the northern border. Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said: "You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah."

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has not ruled out deploying troops on the ground to evacuate Britons from Lebanon if necessary after sending 700 extra soldiers to Cyprus.

Chloe Lewin, a 24-year-old freelance journalist from London who is based in Beirut, Lebanon told the BBC: "Keir Starmer’s telling everyone to get out but we can’t...you can’t get out this week because they’re [the flights] all full and every time you get to the last page of the booking, it just crashes and it says you can’t book a flight.

"And then people I know who have had flights, they’re all getting cancelled. My friends were meant to leave this morning on Egyptair – that got cancelled, so they can’t get out."

Smoke billows over southern Lebanon following an Israeli strike,

People inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike that hit the Lebanese seaside town of Jiyeh