By Alexander Cornwell and Dedi Hayun

TEL AVIV/ARAD March 22 (Reuters) - Southern Israeli towns woke to widespread damage on Sunday after air defences failed to intercept two Iranian missiles overnight that injured scores of civilians in one of the worst attacks of the war so far on Israeli soil.

As daylight broke, the scale of the damage in the desert town of Arad, where one of the strikes hit a multi-story apartment bloc, came into clearer view, with entire floors blown open by the blast.

VATICAN CITY, March 22 (Reuters) - Pope Leo on Sunday said death and suffering caused by the war in the Middle East are a "scandal to the whole human family", renewing his plea for an immediate ceasefire.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the first U.S. pope said that he continues to follow with "dismay" the situation in the Middle East and in other regions torn apart by war and violence.

Here are the latest developments in the Middle East war on Monday:

- Israel kills 1 near Beirut -

An Israeli strike on Hazmieh east of Beirut killed at least one person, Lebanon's health ministry said, the second strike on the residential Christian area in the ongoing fighting between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said around the same time that it had "struck an IRGC Quds Force terrorist in Beirut", referring to the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

- Targeting Hormuz 'economic terrorism' -

By Alexander Cornwell

TEL AVIV, March 22 (Reuters) - Israel's military has been ordered to destroy all bridges over Lebanon's Litani River and to step up the demolition of Lebanese homes near the Israeli border, the country's defence minister said on Sunday.

Earlier, an Israeli was killed in his car near the border with Lebanon after what the military described as a "launch" from Lebanese territory. It was the first Israeli civilian death linked to fire from Lebanon in the current war. Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.

Galit Amir said she thought the presence of a key Israeli nuclear facility on the edge of her hometown Dimona meant it would be well-protected by air defences during the war with Iran.

But that sense of security was torn apart Saturday evening when a direct strike by an Iranian ballistic missile ripped open residential buildings and left dozens wounded.

"We thought we were safe," Amir, a 50-year-old care provider, told AFP.

By Maayan Lubell, Alexander Cornwell and Idrees Ali

TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Iran threatened to escalate their war by attacking energy facilities in the Gulf, a potential widening of hostilities which could deepen a regional crisis and add to concerns in global markets.

Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of Sunday morning, warning of incoming missiles from Iran, after scores of people were hurt overnight in two separate attacks in the southern Israeli towns of Arad and Dimona.

LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) - British cabinet minister Steve Reed said on Sunday that U.S. President Trump spoke for himself when he threatened to "obliterate" Iran's power plants if Tehran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.

Asked what Britain's position on Trump's deadline was, Housing Secretary Reed told Sky News: "The U.S. president is perfectly capable of speaking for himself and defending what it is that he's saying."

Palestinian residents said Sunday that Israeli settlers torched buildings and cars in attacks on several villages in the occupied West Bank, with Israel's army condemning "violence of any kind" after the fact.

The reported arson late Saturday came in the midst of a spate of killings of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Middle East war.

In the suffocating darkness of a sealed shipping container, every thud signalled to Ibrahim Noureldin that one more detainee had died in the crush as Sudanese paramilitary fighters kept forcing more men inside.

Thousands of people are estimated to have been detained in the Rapid Support Forces' (RSF) October takeover of North Darfur's El-Fasher, a battle that a UN investigation found bore the "hallmarks of genocide".

"When people died of thirst and hunger, we were beaten and forced to bury them outside," 42-year-old Noureldin said.

The Israeli military announced Sunday it was expanding its ground campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, warning of a lengthy operation, after Beirut condemned what it called Israel's flagrant violations of Lebanese sovereignty.

Israeli forces were ordered earlier Sunday to destroy bridges they said were used by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah to cross the Litani River, and Lebanese official media reported Israeli raids in the south.

An AFP correspondent saw smoke billowing from a bridge that was hit outside the city of Tyre.