Middle East

President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have held their first call in weeks as Israel expands its ground incursion into Lebanon and considers how to respond to Iran’s recent ballistic missile attack.

Hezbollah has fired another barrage of rockets into Israel, and the militant group’s acting leader vows to keep up pressure that has forced thousands of Israelis from their homes near the Lebanese border.

A hospital director in southern Lebanon says Israel’s military struck outside its gates without warning on Friday, killing seven paramedics and forcing the facility to close.

U.S. arranged flights have brought about 250 Americans and their relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. That’s as thousands of Americans still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights.

The region is bracing for further escalation as Israel vows to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier.

Iran launched at least 180 missiles at Israel, though Israeli authorities said there were no injuries and scattered damage and fires from falling shrapnel.

Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday, the latest in a series of escalating attacks in a yearslong conflict between Israel and Iran and its Arab allies that threatens to push the Middle East closer toward a regionwide war.

The Pentagon says is sending a “few thousand” additional troops to the Middle East to bolster security and to be prepared to defend Israel if necessary.

The first apparent Israeli airstrike on central Beirut in nearly a year of conflict leveled an apartment building early Monday, hours after Israel hit targets across Lebanon and killed dozens of people as Hezbollah sustained heavy blows to its command structure, including the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The Israeli military said Sunday that it has killed another high-ranking Hezbollah official in an airstrike.

The Pentagon says the U.S. is sending additional troops to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that is raising the risk of a greater regional war.

With little disclosed from investigators so far, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the dispatch of the USS Georgia guided missile submarine to the Middle East as Israel braced for retaliation from Iran.

A vibrant fishing industry, some of the world’s largest coral reefs and desalination plants supplying millions with drinking water.

Four foreign nationals were charged Thursday with transporting suspected Iranian-made weapons on a vessel intercepted by U.S. naval forces in the Arabian Sea last month. Two Navy SEALs died during the mission.

An Iraqi militia official has hinted at a desire to deescalate tensions in the Middle East following retaliatory strikes launched by the United States against dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

President Biden says an investigation has been launched into the incident.

John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said in an interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show that the U.S. will do “what we have to do to protect our troops in our facilities”

Early Saturday local time, U.S. forces conducted a strike against a Houthi anti-ship missile that was aimed into the Red Sea and prepared to launch, the U.S. military’s Central Command said.

The U.S. military fired another wave of ship- and submarine-launch missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites Wednesday, U.S. officials said.