Instead, the country was plunged into one of the most devastating assaults since this war began.

In just 10 minutes, 100 Israeli strikes rained down, killing at least 357 people across the country. Residents in Beirut described a scale and intensity unlike anything they had experienced before. Entire neighbourhoods shook. Buildings collapsed.

Just before it began, on Wednesday afternoon, 13-year-old Naya Fakih was in central Beirut doing what most teenagers do - recording a playful video for her friends on Snapchat.

Then, everything changed.

"We heard something," she told me. "We didn't know what it was...and then they bombed the building in front of us."

Naya and her father ran.

"I was so scared," she said. "You never know what they could do next."

Naya has lived through bombings before. But this, she said, was different: "I've never seen a building fall in front of me. I've always known I was safe where I was."

That sense of safety is now gone.

After an explosion...the line cut

When I met her days later, she was shaken but surrounded by her supportive family. Her mother, Ghida, tells me she was at work that afternoon when her phone rang.

"It was Naya. She was shouting and crying. All I could understand was 'explosion' and 'a building'. And then the line cut off."

What followed was confusion layered with fear. Calls that would not connect. Fragments of information that did not quite make sense. Her husband eventually reached her and said they were safe. Even then, she did not fully understand what had happened.

Then Ghida said something to me which helps explain what life is like here in Beirut now.

"We disregarded it," she said of the blast she initially heard. "Because we've normalised it."

Explosions, sonic booms, the distant thud of strikes have been absorbed into daily life. But this time feels different. For so many in Beirut, it feels indiscriminate.

"I couldn't stay where I was," Ghida said. "As a mother, I had to go to my children."

But the roads were blocked. Traffic froze. Beirut, in that moment, was paralysed by fear.

It was only when she watched Naya's video that the reality fully hit. "I saw what happened," she said. "And then it started to sink in."

'No child deserves to go through this'

What the video captured, almost by accident, was terror. A child filming a social media video one moment, running for her life the next.

"I hope nothing like that ever happens again," Naya told me. "No child deserves to go through what I have gone through."

Her mother said she shared the footage as a message to the world.

"It's not about Naya," she said. "It's about childhood. About what is happening to children here."

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Israel says it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but the strikes hit densely populated residential areas. The dead included children, mothers, elderly couples, doctors, poets.

The scale of the attack raises serious questions about proportionality, with the Lebanese government accusing Israel not only of breaching international law, but of committing war crimes.

Beirut has known war before. It understands loss. But this time there was no warning. No evacuation order. No time to escape. What remains is a traumatised population still searching for bodies in the rubble.

Naya's video will fade from timelines, replaced by the next viral clip. But for her, and for countless children across Lebanon, this is not a moment. It is a reality that does not end when the camera stops rolling.

This includes expanding the full-time military, bolstering the number of reservists and attempting to get up to 300,000 civilians to join a "strategic reserve" - a pool of people with some form of training that could be called upon in the event of a major crisis.

"The world has changed," General Carignan told Sky News. "We have to get ready for large-scale conflicts, more conventional, so we need a different military to do that and different capability."

The ability of hostile states such as Russia and North Korea to launch long-range missiles that could strike Canada is a threat the military chief is tracking.

She is also eyeing growing competition between NATO allies, Moscow and Beijing in the High North and across the whole Arctic - a vast area of strategic importance to the Canadians.

A need to protect vital interests is one reason why Mark Carney's Canadian government is exploring the possibility of joining a multinational force of like-minded nations led by the UK, with a focus on this region as well as the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic.

General Carignan visited London on Friday and Saturday to meet with counterparts from the 10-strong Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) - also fellow NATO allies - to find out more about what benefits membership would bring and how Canada could contribute.

"We feel very, very welcome," she said. "From my perspective, JEF represents a lot of opportunities for more collaboration and again to better address some of those military challenges that we have."

First conceived by the UK in 2012, the other countries in the grouping comprise the Nordic nations of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as the Netherlands.

The addition of Canada, given its geography, would make sense.

General Carignan listed some of the advantages her country could bring, including "situational awareness, sharing of information, basing capabilities as well in covering that area, various types of sovereignty or operations and exercises".

Asked why Canada did not choose to join sooner, she said back in 2013 to 2014 her country was reducing investment in defence - unlike now.

"We have a collective of Nordic nations who are concerned more specifically by that area. So again, the situation has changed and hence now we can reconsider being part of the group."

Unlike NATO, JEF members do not need to operate by consensus. It means their forces can respond faster and more adaptively to emerging threats.

JEF nations are already working to counter threats by Russia under the threshold of conventional war, such as the targeting of critical undersea infrastructure like gas and oil pipelines and communications cables.

"The JEF allows to have that flexible option ready in support of NATO, complementary to NATO, which I think is a very positive thing from my perspective," General Carignan said.

Asked whether she liked the idea of joining the grouping, she said: "Yes, we are definitely interested. There's a little bit of work to do, but as I said, it looks very promising."

General Carignan is no stranger to conflict.

Commissioned into the Canadian Military Engineers in 1990, she has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, working her way up through the ranks to become chief of the defence staff in July 2024. She is also a mother of four.

"I think I'm here today because Canada decided to remove systemic barriers in our military 40 years ago," she said, when asked how she broke through that glass ceiling.

This meant she was able to access various positions that allowed for promotion, unlike the many women who came before her.

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General Carignan said she is standing on their shoulders.

As for the main challenges that she faced along the way, the military chief said: "Perceptions. Perceptions that women are weak, perceptions that you can't be in a combat role and be a mother at the same time.

"So those are the type of barriers that are more stereotypes than actually what the reality is. The reality of combat, the reality of serving in the military, in combat roles."

She is the only woman sitting at the table when NATO military chiefs meet - something she is sure will change over time.

"I'm sure there will be [more female military chiefs] because it's totally possible and NATO allies are removing systemic barriers as well, and it's only a question of time."

Sky News is the official media partner of the London Defence Conference 2026. Later this year, Sky News will launch a new defence and security app, bringing together video-first reporting from our leading journalists and experts.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square on Saturday to protest the ban on Palestine Action.

The Metropolitan Police said that 212 people had been arrested so far, with ages ranging from 27 to 82. The force confirmed all arrests made are for showing support for a proscribed organisation.

Among them was Del Naja, a singer-songwriter from Bristol, who sat with demonstrators with a sign that read "I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action", before he was carried away by officers.

Elderly demonstrators sat on camping chairs and on the ground as they held placards, and a number of individuals were carried away by police.

As one woman was carried away from the protest, people chanted "shame on you".

A man was lifted out by police in handcuffs, while officers walked an elderly protester with a walking stick to police vans.

Protesters accused officers of dragging a woman out of the protest and not supporting her shoulders.

Another made a peace sign as she was removed, with another saying, "Palestine Action is not a proscribed organisation" as she was led off by police.

The protest group, Defend Our Juries, said the demonstration, called Everyone Day, would show the "resistance" to the Palestine Action ban is "stronger than ever".

The Metropolitan Police said Saturday's action is "likely to involve offending rather than a lawful protest".

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The force said in March it would resume arresting Palestine Action supporters as a High Court battle over the ban on the group continues.

Police had paused the arrest of demonstrators in February, after the High Court ruled the government's ban was unlawful, but then decided to resume as an appeal against the ruling is likely to take several months.

'This issue affects everyone'

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said: "This issue affects everyone. From striking workers to peaceful protesters, everyone fighting for any worthy cause is at risk.

"If left unopposed, what starts with an unlawful ban on one direct action group will lead on to the removal of everyone's rights and freedoms."

'It will present some significant difficulties'

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Saturday, former Met Police chief superintendent Dal Babu, said: "I think the difficulty is, when you've got 700 or 800 people who are willing to be arrested, that just isn't practical. The optics of this will be very challenging for the police.

"It will present some significant difficulties for the police in terms of how they manage it and also be aware of the fact there will be a huge amount of people who have sympathy with what is going on with the views of Palestine Action."

He said the decision to make arrests at the protest was an operational one and would be based on the intelligence officers have.

Protesters have held mass rallies aiming to overwhelm the criminal justice system with the number of cases.

More than 3,000 people have been arrested so far for allegedly expressing support for Palestine Action since it was banned as a terrorist group last year. More than 2,400 of these were in London.

A neighbour alerted police to "sounds of a child" coming from a vehicle in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders of Switzerland and Germany on Monday.

After forcing the van open, officers found a child "lying in a foetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement", prosecutor Nicolas Heitz said.

He added the child was clearly malnourished and could no longer walk because he had been sitting down for so long.

When officers spoke to the boy, he said he had not showered since 2024.

His father told investigators he put the child in the truck in November of that year "to protect him" because his partner wanted to send the boy to a psychiatric hospital.

But the prosecutor said there were no medical records of the boy suffering psychiatric problems before he disappeared.

The father has been held in custody on charges including preliminary kidnapping.

His partner, who denied knowing the boy was in the van, has been charged with offences including failure to help a minor in danger and released under judicial supervision.

'There are no words'

The discovery shocked residents in the small village, with one neighbour named Danielle, describing the situation as "truly devastating".

"We don't understand it. It's horrific, there are no words," she said.

"I never once noticed anything, never heard anything...It feels like we're living in a movie or a dream, and we keep thinking, 'tomorrow I'll wake up, and maybe it's not real'. We just can't comprehend it."

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The boy's 12-year-old sister and the 10-year-old daughter of his father's partner have been placed in the care of social services.

Friends and family told investigators they thought the boy was in a psychiatric facility, while his teachers were told he had transferred to a different school.

Officers were called to an address in Leaden Roding, Dunmow, at 10.45pm on Friday where they found a woman with serious injuries.

Despite the best efforts of emergency services, she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Essex Police said in a statement: "We have been carrying out enquiries to establish the circumstances, and we believe she had been attacked by a dog at the property in Long Hide."

The animal has been seized by police.

A 37-year-old man from Dunmow has been arrested on suspicion of being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control and causing injury resulting in death.

He is currently in custody.

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Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper said: "I know this incident will be a shock to the local community.

"My thoughts, and those of us all at Essex Police, are with the loved ones of the woman who died yesterday.

"We will have officers in the area throughout today so please come and speak to them if you have any information or have any concerns.

"Experienced detectives are leading the investigation to understand exactly what has happened."