More drones attacked Saudi Arabia early Saturday, the country’s Defense Ministry said.

The ministry said it intercepted four drones attacking the country’s massive Shaybah oil field, located deep in the sands of the Empty Quarter desert. It was the second attack within hours.

Earlier, the ministry said it intercepted a drone attack targeting an area around the capital, Riyadh.

Authorities there say there was an interception over the city-state in the United Arab Emirates.

People heard several blasts in the morning. Later the government’s Dubai Media Office said there was “a minor incident resulting from the fall of debris after an interception has been successfully contained.”

Flights heading to Dubai International Airport — which is the world’s busiest for international travel and has been trying to restart service — circled a distance away just before the interception.

Writing for the Qatar-funded news network Al Jazeera, Sultan al-Khulaifi of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies said Gulf Arab states “watched with dread” as the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran and they had “invested enormous diplomatic capital in preventing precisely this moment.”

“That Iran’s response has been to turn its missiles on these same neighbors is not only a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions, but is also a profound moral and legal failure that risks poisoning relations for generations to come,” he wrote.

He also argued that “the strategic logic Iran is operating on — that attacking Gulf states will pressure Washington to end the war — is not only flawed in practice, it actively serves Israeli interests.”

“By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbors.”

The defense minister of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s army chief met Saturday to discuss “ways to stop these attacks” from Iran, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported.

“During the meeting, they discussed Iranian attacks on the kingdom within the framework of the Joint Strategic Defense Agreement between the two brotherly countries, and ways to stop these attacks, which do not serve the security and stability of the region,” the agency said.

There was no immediate word from Pakistan, a neighbor of Iran that so far has not been drawn into the spreading war.

In September, after Israel attacked Hamas officials in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact that defines any attack on either nation as an attack on both. Pakistan’s defense minister later said his nation’s nuclear program “will be made available” to Saudi Arabia if needed under the pact.

The country faced repeated drone attacks early Saturday targeting the area around its capital, Riyadh, and a major oil field.

The Saudi Defense Ministry said it intercepted all the drones it detected coming into the kingdom so far.

Coming under particular attack was Saudi Arabia’s massive Shaybah oil field, located deep in the sands of the Empty Quarter desert. It produces 1 million barrels of oil a day, according to the state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco, which refers to the field as “most remote treasure on Earth.”

Iranian attacks increasingly have targeted oil infrastructure across the Gulf Arab states and disrupted ship transits through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded passes.

The group said early Saturday that its fighters clashed with an Israeli force that landed on the along the border with Syria.

Israel did not acknowledge the fighting, and its military did not respond to requests for comment.

The Iranian-backed militant group said the clashes late Friday happened in a cemetery on the edge of the town of Nabi Chit.

Hezbollah said Israeli miliary launched massive airstrikes to secure the withdrawal of its forces amid the clashes.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least three people were killed, and 16 others were wounded in the strikes.

The State Department announced late Friday that it approved the sale of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. It also said Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined there was an emergency need for the munitions and waived the normal congressional review process.

The notice to Congress informing it that lawmakers would be bypassed in the consideration of the sa le did not say where Israel intends to use the bombs.

“The proposed sale will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defense, and serve as a deterrent to regional threats,” it said.

On his Truth Social platform Friday night, the president said he and first lady Melania Trump would travel to Delaware the following day “to pay our Highest Respect to our Great Warriors, who are returning home for the last time.”

The White House had said previously that Trump would attend the dignified transfer of the six U.S. soldiers killed during the conflict in the Middle East.

The ritual is a transfer of remains of troops killed during their military service and is one of the most solemn acts for any president.

A third Iranian naval vessel in the Indian Ocean reportedly is docked in India after a U.S. submarine sank one and another went to Sri Lanka.

The Press Trust of India, citing unnamed “government sources,” said the IRIS Lavan has been docked in Kochi since March 4. It said the ship “developed urgent technical issues and was granted emergency docking approval” March 1, after the start of the war.

The Lavan’s 183 crew members are “being accommodated at Indian naval facilities on humanitarian grounds,” PTI reported.

The Lavan is a 2,500-ton Hengam-class landing ship.

The U.S. sank the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka’s coast Wednesday. The IRIS Bushehr sought assistance from Sri Lanka, and its more than 200 sailors were being brought to that island nation.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said local gunmen tried to repel the force on the edge of the town of Nabi Chit. NNA also said Israeli warplanes were flying over the area.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that Israeli forces tried to land three times in Nabi Chit and the third attempt occurred after midnight Friday. It was said to have been met inside the town by Hezbollah and local fighters who clashed with it.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AP request for confirmation.

Nabi Chit is a stronghold of the Hezbollah militant group.

Hours earlier the Israeli military issued a warning to people in Nabi Chit and several nearby villages to evacuate. It was followed by a series of airstrikes.

The country’s Ministry of Defense said early Saturday that it intercepted and destroyed the missile.

It was launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, a major military installation in eastern Riyadh.

Large plumes of smoke were seen billowing over the western part of the Iranian capital very early Saturday morning.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the U.S. is “tracking everything” and factoring it into battle plans, when asked about reports that U.S. intelligence shows Russia is providing Iran with information that could help it strike American assets in the Middle East.

“The American people can rest assured their commander-in-chief is well aware of who’s talking to who,” Hegseth said. “And anything that shouldn’t be happening, whether it’s in public or back-channeled, is being confronted and confronted strongly.”

Hegseth also downplayed the possibility that Russia’s assistance could be putting Americans in harms way.

“We’re putting the other guys in danger, and that’s our job. So we’re not concerned about that,” he said. “But the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live.”

Following a White House event with conference commissioners and other leaders in the collegiate sports space, the president knocked down reporters’ efforts to ask him questions about the war and his decision to oust Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary.

But after a reporter’s follow-up query as to why he opted to hold such an event amid other pressing issues, Trump acknowledged that “it doesn’t sound very important compared to what’s happening in Iran and other places, but it is very important to me.”

He said that on a scale of one to 10, he would rank U.S. military actions as “a 12 to 15.” Trump also said: “We had a choice … and we did something about it.”

Trump opened several White House events this week by recapping U.S. actions in Iran but did not do so Friday.

At least two drones struck energy infrastructure and facilities of U.S. contractors in Iraq’s southern Basra province Friday evening, according to two security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak with the press.

The officials added that unmanned aerial vehicles targeted a compound housing foreign oil company offices and warehouses, triggering fires at facilities linked to U.S. energy services firms.

The attack comes amid a spate of drone and missile incidents across Iraq and the region, including strikes on oil fields and the cargo section of the Basra International Airport.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.

Facing questions about whether the Iran war is depleting certain U.S. stockpiles, the president said top defense manufacturers “have agreed to quadruple Production” of “exquisite” weapons.

The term often is used to describe more unique, expensive or technically complex weapons, like hypersonic missiles or long-range air interceptors, broadly understood to be held in lower numbers than more traditional munitions.

In his social media post, Trump didn’t offer details about which specific weapons would see a rise in production. He also said he has stepped up orders of more basic munitions, “which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela.”

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters this week that the military had “sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand.” But he also said the military was shifting from using long-range rockets to less sophisticated bombs with shorter ranges.

The report came minutes after the Israeli military said it was working to intercept missiles launched from Iran toward Israel very early on Saturday morning.

Many thunder-like booms rumbled over Jerusalem just past midnight local time.

The U.S. Treasury secretary told FOX Business host Larry Kudlow that Friday night would be the United States’ “biggest bombing campaign” in Iran. U.S. and Israeli officials have said this week that attacks on Iran would increase.

Earlier this week Trump told BLN the “big wave is yet to come.” Additionally, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that firepower over Tehran would “surge dramatically” through “more bomber pulses more frequently.”

The video from Thursday night showed what appear to be Iranian ballistic missiles flying over the occupied West Bank and dropping smaller bomblets.

An independent weapons expert said they were cluster munitions. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, reviewed the video and said that, based on the number of visible objects seen, submunitions were released from an Iranian ballistic missile that was fitted with a cargo warhead.

Israel says Iran has fired cluster munitions toward the country and its police and on Friday published a public service announcement in which a bomb disposal technician warned about the dangers of cluster bombs.

Israel has used cluster munitions in previous wars in Lebanon, as have other countries such as Russia and Syria. According to AP reporting, the US last used them in 2003 in Iraq but continues to keep them in its arsenal and has not joined a convention banning their use.

Proponents of a ban say they kill indiscriminately and endanger civilians long after their use.

At a small airport in Turkey’s eastern Van province, about 20 passengers, mostly Iranians, lay on rows of chairs waiting to fly to Istanbul the next morning.

Mehregan, a 26 year old who studies in China, was visiting her family in Ahvaz for winter holidays when the war started. Because Iran’s airspace remains closed, she drove more than 15 hours across Iran to fly out from Turkey.

At the Turkish border, “they let me go easily because I have a visa from China,” she said.

She was spending the night in the airport waiting for the first flight to Istanbul, from where she will fly back to China.

She asked not to be identified by her full name out of fears that speaking to the media could cause problems with authorities.

The system, developed by an American company, will soon will head to the Middle East to help defend against Iranian drones.

It fires drones against drones and has shown success in fighting those used by Russia in its war against Ukraine. The system was deployed to Romania and Poland last year.

While the U.S. has used Patriot and THAAD missile systems to take down Iranian missiles, a U.S. defense official says there are limited effective U.S. anti-drone defenses now in the Middle East.

Another U.S. official called the U.S. response to countering Iran’s Shahed drones “disappointing.”

Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

Lebanon’s Disaster Risk Management Unit said 110,162 people have been internally displaced following Israeli evacuation warnings for areas in southern and eastern Lebanon and across Beirut’s southern suburbs, a densely populated district on the outskirts of the capital that is home to hundreds of thousands.

The unit, which operates under the prime minister’s office, said 512 shelters are open nationwide.

The Lebanese government has said it opened additional shelters in the north and east as well as a large football stadium near Beirut to accommodate the surge of displaced people.

More than 200 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes so far, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

They were wounded by two separate attacks in the afternoon. The Ghanaian Armed Forces said in a statement that they were stable.

The government protested “the unfortunate incident,” it said.

The missiles struck the Ghanaian Battalion Headquarters, part of the United Nations Interim Force. The attack also destroyed the officers’ mess.

No country was named as being behind the launches.

The Treasury secretary said his agency “may un-sanction other Russian oil” in order to boost the global supply as the U.S. continues its attacks on Iran.

“There are hundreds and millions of sanctioned barrels of sanction crude on the water,” Bessent told FOX Business host Larry Kudlow, Friday afternoon. “And in essence, by un-sanctioning them, Treasury can create supply.”

“We’re going to keep a cadence of announcing measures to bring relief to the market during this conflict,” Bessent said.

Kristine Beckerle, the rights group’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, called the warnings overly broad and vague. In the day since the military issued a mass evacuation order for Beirut’s southern suburbs, it has carried out airstrikes, some without warning, she said.

“Issuing mass evacuation orders does not grant the Israeli military the right to treat these areas as open-fire zones, nor does it absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians,” Beckerle said.

Earlier in the day, a U.N. official said testimonies from tens of thousands of Lebanese displaced reflect fear and anxiety. The U.N. says it has delivered over 65,000 relief items to 22,000 displaced people in government shelters, from bedding to jerry cans, over the last four days.

Amir Saeid Iravani charged that they are deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure across the country, including densely populated residential areas.

“These acts constitute clear war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Iravani told reporters.

He said Iran does not seek war or escalation but reiterated that Tehran will take all necessary measures to defend itself, its territory and its independence.

Iravani also said Iran does not accept Trump’s statement that he should play a role in choosing the country’s new supreme leader and it “constitutes a clear violation of the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of states and enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.”

The State Security Service of Azerbaijan said Iranian agents and their local accomplices were planning to blow up the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries the country’s crude to global markets, and launch attacks at the Israeli Embassy in Baku, a synagogue and a leader of the country’s Jewish community, according to a report by the state television.

It said the attacks were aimed at sowing panic and denting the Caspian Sea nation’s international image.

The agency said the suspects brought explosives into the country and hid them in secret caches. It said four Azerbaijani citizens were charged with involvement in the plot and given 6 ½-year prison sentences. Three others were arrested.

On Thursday, Iranian drone attacks on Azerbaijan wounded four civilians and damaged an airport building.

In a release, Kristine Beckerle, the rights group’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, called the Israeli warnings overly broad and vague. In the day since the military issued a mass evacuati on order for Beirut’s southern suburbs, it has carried out airstrikes, some without warning, she said.

“Issuing mass evacuation orders does not grant the Israeli military the right to treat these areas as open-fire zones, nor does it absolve Israel of its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians,” said Beckerle.

Earlier in the day, Ayaki Ito, a director at the UN human rights office more, said testimonies from tens of thousands of Lebanese displaced reflect fear and anxiety. The office said it’s delivered over 65,000 relief items to 22,000 displaced people in government shelters, from bedding to jerry cans, over the last four days.

Three U.N. peacekeepers were wounded after heavy firing struck a base of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in the village of Al-Qawzah on Friday evening, the mission said in a statement.

UNIFIL said the peacekeepers were inside their base when the attack occurred. One of the injured was transferred to a hospital in Beirut for treatment, while the two others were being treated at a UNIFIL medical facility, the statement said. A fire that broke out at the base was later extinguished, the statement added.

UNIFIL said it would investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident, adding that it was “unacceptable that peacekeepers performing Security Council-mandated tasks are targeted.”

It was not immediately clear who carried out the firing.

An Associated Press report last month cited an internal military document describing a surge in incidents involving Israeli forces near U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, including drone-dropped grenades and gunfire near their positions.

The Russian president had a call Friday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. He expressed condolences over the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and “numerous civilian casualties resulting from the U.S. and Israel’s armed aggression.”

In the call, the first reported by the Kremlin since the start of the war, Putin “reaffirmed Russia’s principled stance in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, the rejection of force as a method to solve any issues surrounding Iran or arising in the Middle East, and a swift return to the path of diplomatic resolution,” according to the Kremlin’s readout.

It said Pezeshkian “expressed gratitude for Russia’s solidarity with the Iranian people as they defend their sovereignty and the independence of their country” and offered a “detailed update on the developments during the latest active phase of the conflict.”

Qatar announced Friday evening that it would partially resume flights with limited operational capacity as the conflict in the region widens.

Qatar Civil Aviation Authority said on the social platform X that a limited number of flights will resume through designated contingency routes, including for passenger evacuation and air cargo.

Airspaces have closed, cruise ships and tankers have been unable to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and major airlines have canceled flights as the war widened.

Qatar’s defense ministry said the country faced “waves of attacks” from dawn until evening, involving 10 drones. Nine of them were intercepted, while one fell in an uninhabited area.

An officer spoke to journalists along the border with Lebanon to the backdrop of consistent booms from missiles being intercepted and alerts warning that drones were incoming. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity as per the army’s regulations.

He said Israel has deployed troops to protect some 200 Israeli families living on the border and the army is placing soldiers between civilians and Hezbollah to protect them.

Northern Israel is receiving missiles from both Iran and Hezbollah. Atop a lookout of Israel’s northern villages that are adjacent to Lebanese ones, the officer briefed journalists as they sought shelter between alerts.

Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company, said via the social platform X that the Iran-wide internet shutdown entered its 7th day, with its radar monitor showing internet traffic data at less than 1% of its prewar levels. It comes as Israeli-U.S. strikes pummel the country, terrifying civilians.

Human Rights Watch condemned the shutdown, calling it a violation of human rights and urging Iranian authorities to end it. It said the shutdown could “conceal large-scale atrocities, contribute to the spread of mis- and disinformation, and unlawfully restrict access to information.” It could also heighten the risk of civilian harm by hampering access to life-saving information, food distribution, shelter and medical care and services.

“Internet shutdowns can also contribute to severe psychological harm on people during the conflict as they are unable to contact their loved ones,” said Tomiwa Ilori, senior technology and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

An Israeli military official told AP that Israeli soldiers have taken up around five to seven new positions in southern Lebanon, some of which are dynamic, expanding beyond the five strategic locations held since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted a round of fighting in late 2024.

Israel’s military said it was sending additional troops into southern Lebanon after the Iran war began but did not give specifics on how exactly it was expanding its presence.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military protocol, characterized the operation as a limited expansion of Israel’s ceasefire presence along the five points. He said there were around five to seven — but under a dozen — contingents of troops who were setting up defensive blocking positions and ambushes for Hezbollah and roaming the border area. He maintained that the soldiers were meters, not miles, into Lebanese territory.

He said so far the ground forces has killed about a dozen Hezbollah militants but did not provide evidence for the claim. He said none were senior-level operatives.

A drone attack targeted the Rotana Arjaan hotel in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, local media reported.

Associated Press journalists in the area heard explosions Friday and saw smoke rising. There was no immediate report of casualties or damages.

Irbil Gov. Omid Khoshnaw told the Rudaw TV network that “the attack was successfully thwarted” and the drone crashed.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier Friday had warned that militias “may seek to target hotels frequented by foreigners in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.”

The Kurdish region’s counterterrorism unit said in a statement that U.S.-led coalition forces intercepted and shot down four explosive-laden drones, one of which landed near a hotel. It said no casualties were reported.

The Kurdish region of Iraq, which hosts U.S. bases and bases of Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, has been attacked by missiles and drones dozens of times since the war in Iran began. Most have been intercepted.

The USS Gerald R. Ford has moved from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, transiting the Suez Canal on Thursday, according to images posted to a Pentagon website.

The aircraft carrier was ordered to the region from the Caribbean Sea in mid-February and had been operating in the eastern Mediterranean for the opening days of the war with Iran. At least one of the destroyers accompanying the carrier also transited the canal, according to the images posted online.

Staggering amounts of money are funding a war “spent on destruction while politicians continue to boast about cutting aid budgets for those in greatest need,”
Undersecretary-General Tom Fletcher said. This leaves less attention and funding for help in conflicts and crises in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, South Sudan and Congo.

“As conflicts spread, the international system pulls further apart and more resources flow towards weapons rather than the funding, the political will, the diplomatic energy, needed for saving lives,” Fletcher told U.N. reporters Friday. “Humanitarian action is always harder in times of war but this, of course, is when it is needed most.”

“We need calmer heads to prevail,” Fletcher said.

A U.S. submarine’s deadly attack on an Iranian warship does not appear to have violated international or American military law, though it’s not yet cle ar whether the sub took sufficient measures to rescue nearly three dozen survivors, legal experts said.

Legal questions are swirling about the underpinnings for the entire U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran as well as the aftermath of the torpedo attack on the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean, the experts said.

Eighty-seven people died and 32 Iranian sailors were rescued after the sub torpedoed the Dena in international waters near Sri Lanka.

While the attacks on Iran overall are “a clear violation of the UN charter,” the Dena was “a clear military target,” said Marko Milanovic, professor of international law at the University of Reading in Britain. “Targeting a military vessel is not a war crime,” Milanovic said.

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Satellite images, expert analysis and information released by the U.S. and Israeli militaries suggest that the Feb 28 explosion that killed scores of Iranian students at a school was likely caused by U.S. airstrikes.

Several factors point to a U.S. strike:

• The launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon’s instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.
• The school’s location next to a base of the Revolutionary Guard in Hormozgan Province and close to a barracks for its naval brigade. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school. The U.S. is operating warships in the Arabian Sea, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, within range of the school.
• Israel has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported conducting any strikes south of Isfahan, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.
• Experts say the tight pattern of the damage visible on the satellite photos is consistent with a targeted airstrike.

Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for the blast. Neither country has accepted responsibility.

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