The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it has approved the sale of an estimated $1.96 billion in weapons to bolster Saudi Arabia's air defenses, as the war ramps up in the Middle East.

Pakistan said on Thursday it would encourage the United States and Iran to stop violence and resume talks under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it helped mediate last month.

A drone struck a ship located off the port in Iraq's southern province of Basra on Thursday, a security official told AFP.

The United Nations atomic agency's head has denounced the killing of the chief engineer of Ukraine's Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a drone strike Moscow has blamed on Kyiv.

Tehran on Thursday accused the United States of carrying out a "barbaric attack" after a cancer hospital in Iran's southwest was forced to evacuate due to nearby strikes.

Ukraine's ousted defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Thursday accused commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky of trying to divide the war-torn country, detailing a feud between the pair that led to his removal and triggered protests supporting him.

The British government said Thursday it had taken British Steel into full public ownership to "protect the future of steel production in the UK", after taking control from Chinese firm Jingye.

Syrian authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle a shipment of advanced weapons and missiles through the Iraqi-Syrian border, the Syrian interior ministry has announced.

Tehran warned Thursday it would target regional infrastructure if the United States carried out threats to attack Iran's infrastructure, as the war in the Middle East resumed.

The spokesman for Iran's military headquarters said that if the U.S. followed through on its threats, "all infrastructure in the region" would be "crushed under the steel blows" of Iran's armed forces.

The Israeli military said it killed three Hezbollah members in south Lebanon, shortly after U.S.-sponsored Israel-Lebanon negotiations were held in Rome.

"Earlier today, IDF soldiers identified three armed Hezbollah terrorists in the area of Beit Yahoun, located within the Security Zone in southern Lebanon," the Israeli military said Wednesday in a statement.