MIDDLE EAST CRISIS DEEPENS

Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran Thursday and Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel after hitting an Israeli hospital overnight, as a week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an exit strategy from either side.

- REUTERS & ASSOCIATED PRESS

Following the strike that damaged the Soroka medical centre in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran's ‘tyrants’ would pay the ‘full price’.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday's barrage and said the military ‘has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist’.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing, veering from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the US might join it.