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U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that Israel had not yet decided how it will respond to Iran's missile attack against it, adding that the Israelis should consider not hitting Iran's oil fields.
"The Israelis have not concluded what they are going to do in terms of a strike. That's under discussion," Biden told reporters at a White House news briefing, adding he expected to speak with Israeli officials once they decide.
"If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields," the president said.
Late Tuesday, Iran fired about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in a major escalation of a yearlong conflict between Israel and Iran's regional armed proxies. The Israeli military intercepted most of the missiles with help from allied U.S. naval forces.
"Look, the Israelis have every right to respond to vicious attacks on them - not just from the Iranians, but from everyone, from Hezbollah, the Houthis," said Biden. "But the fact is they have to be very much more careful about dealing with civilian casualties."
The U.S. president spoke hours after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a very rare appearance at Friday prayers, telling a massive crowd at the Grand Mosalla Mosque in Tehran that his regime would not back down against Israel.
He defended Iran's missile barrage, calling it legal and legitimate and the least that Israel's "criminal regime" could expect.
Khamenei also defended the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by U.S.-designated terror group Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza and the subsequent conflict in Lebanon.
Hezbollah targets
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Beirut on Friday for meetings with Lebanese officials. At a news conference, he said Iran did not intend to continue the missile attacks on Israel but would "respond tougher" if attacked.
He said Iran would also support a cease-fire in Lebanon, if it was accepted by the Lebanese people and Hezbollah, and if it was simultaneous with a cease-fire in Gaza.
Araghchi spoke hours after a massive series of Israeli airstrikes overnight on a Beirut suburb that were believed to have targeted Hashem Safieddine, slated to be the next Hezbollah chief after Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah in a wave of airstrikes one week ago.
Neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah has commented on Safieddine or his status. The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that it had targeted Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters. Earlier it said it had killed Mohammad Rashid Sakafi, the commander of Hezbollah's communications unit.
Yemen front
Three U.S. defense officials confirmed to VOA that Washington struck about 15 targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Friday, including Hodeida and the capital, Sanaa. Targets included Houthis' offensive capabilities.
The Iranian-backed Yemeni group has launched missiles toward central Israel and has fired at U.S. warships in the Red Sea in recent days.
Also Friday, Israel carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon, including one on the Masnaa border crossing on the main highway linking Lebanon and Syria. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the IDF said the crossing was used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah from Iran through Syria.
Video and pictures taken at the scene show a crater in the highway, roughly 12 meters in diameter, making the road impassable for vehicles. People could be seen carrying their belongings and walking around the crater and over the rubble-strewn road to reach Syria.
The Lebanese government said more than 300,000 people fleeing the conflict in Lebanon have crossed into Syria. Many of them are Syrian refugees who came to Lebanon to escape their own civil war. More than a million people have been displaced inside Lebanon.
The country's overwhelmed hospitals had some good news Friday when the World Health Organization announced that its first flight with enough medical supplies to treat tens of thousands of injured people had arrived in Beirut. More flights are planned.
American fatality
The State Department confirmed Friday that Kamel Jawad, an American citizen from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in an Israeli strike near Nabatieh on Tuesday.
"We extend our condolences to the family. We are working to understand the circumstances of the incident," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. "As we have noted repeatedly, it is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Any loss of civilian life is a tragedy."
As of Thursday, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said, 2,011 people had been killed in the past year, the vast majority in the last two weeks.
"The toll on civilians from this campaign is totally unacceptable," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters. "All parties must do whatever they can at all times to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure and ensure that civilians are never put in harm's way."
The IDF also said Friday that since Israel's ground operation began Monday in southern Lebanon, "250 Hezbollah terrorists, including 20 leaders," have been eliminated by land and air, and more than 2,000 military targets have been attacked, including "terrorist elements and facilities," military buildings, weapons depots and missile platforms.
Separately, the IDF reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed, and at least two dozen injured, in a drone attack that occurred Thursday from Iraq. The soldiers were located at their base in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Gaza and West Bank
In Gaza, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said Friday that three of its schools were hit over the previous two days. The facilities were sheltering around 20,000 people and more than 20 people were reportedly killed.
On Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry reported at least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses said the strike hit a building that housed a popular cafe.
The Israeli military said in a statement it killed Hamas leader Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, whom it accused of participating in numerous attacks.
VOA White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara, U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer, Pentagon Correspondent Carla Babb, State Department Correspondent Nike Ching and Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some material came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.