There is fear and confusion on the streets of Beirut as people displaced from their homes by sweeping Israeli evacuation orders wait to see what happens next.

Communities across huge swathes of Lebanon - including the south of the country and the capital's southern suburbs - have been told by Israel to leave their homes because of military action against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

The orders are unprecedented in their scale, with hundreds of thousands of people affected.

Families unable to find spaces in shelters spent the night sleeping on the streets or in their cars, as the Israeli military carried out what it described as a "broad-scale wave" of strikes on the Dahieh suburb of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

It said the strikes had hit "an executive council's command centre and a facility storing UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] utilised by Hezbollah for conducting attacks" against Israel.