U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that Israel has not yet decided how it will respond to Iran's missile attack, adding it 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 expects to have a discussion with Israeli officials once they decide.
"If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking about other alternatives than striking oilfields," he said.
Iran late Tuesday 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," Biden said. "But the fact is they have to be very much more careful about dealing with civilian casualties."
Biden spoke hours after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a rare appearance at Friday prayers, telling a massive crowd at the Grand Mosalla Mosque in Tehran 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 attacks on Israel last October 7 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. He told a news conference Iran does 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 were accepted by the Lebanese people and Hezbollah, and if it were simultaneous with a cease-fire in Gaza.
Araghchi spoke just hours after a massive series of Israeli airstrikes overnight on a Beirut suburb were believed to have targeted Hashem Safieddine, slated to be the next Hezbollah chief after Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah in a wave of airstrikes a week ago.
Neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah have commented on Safieddine or his status. Israel Defense Forces said Friday they targeted Hezbollah's intelligence headquarters. IDF officials had earlier said their forces 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 fired at U.S. warships in the Red Sea in recent days.
New Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon
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, 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.
IDF officials later on Friday issued urgent evacuation warnings to residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut, sharing maps with buildings visually specified in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood. "You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will operate in the near future," they said.
Witnesses said a series of explosions were heard early Saturday over Beirut’s southern suburbs. In a statement issued Saturday, Hezbollah said it was engaged in clashes with Israeli forces trying to infiltrate the southern town on Odaisseh.
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 State Department on Friday evening said it plans to provide "nearly $157 million in new U.S. humanitarian assistance to support populations affected by conflict in Lebanon and the region."
"This funding will address new and existing needs of internally displaced persons and refugee populations inside Lebanon and the communities that host them," the statement said. "The assistance will also support those fleeing to neighboring Syria."
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.
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."
A State Department spokesperson on Friday evening confirmed that U.S.-arranged flights have brought about 500 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during the escalated fighting. Thousands of others still there face airstrikes amid diminishing commercial flights.
As of Thursday, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said, 2,011 people had been killed in the past year, the vast majority in the past 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 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 Thursday in a drone attack 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.
IDF officials said late Friday that Israel's air force struck "terrorists operating inside a command and control center" in central Gaza that had formerly been the Ahmad al-Kurd School, and that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians."
White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara, U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer, Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb, State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching and VOA's Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some material came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
