A senior Hamas official has told The Associated Press that the Palestinian militant group had expected stronger intervention from Hezbollah in its war with Israel, in a rare public appeal to its allies in the region.

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas' decision-making political bureau, said in an interview that "we need more" from allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, in light of an Israeli air campaign that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 7,000 people, mostly civilians, in the besieged Gaza Strip.

U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.

The U.S. strikes reflect the Biden administration's determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israel's war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.

Israeli forces backed by fighter jets and drones carried out a second ground raid into Gaza in as many days and struck targets on the outskirts of Gaza City, the military said Friday, as it prepares for a widely expected ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory.

U.S. warplanes meanwhile struck targets in eastern Syria that the Pentagon said were linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard after a string of attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed fighters, adding to the already high regional tensions fueled by the three-week-old Gaza war.

Muslim and Jewish civil rights groups say they've seen large increases in reports of harassment, bias and sometimes physical assaults against members of their communities since Oct. 7.

The Anti-Defamation League and the Center on American-Islamic Relations saw increases in reported instances, many involving violence or threats against protesters at rallies in support of Israel or in support of Palestinians over the last two weeks as war broke out between Israel and Hamas. Other attacks and harassment reported by the groups were directed at random Muslim or Jewish people in public.

A man shot and killed at least 16 people at a restaurant and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday and then fled into the night, sparking a massive search by hundreds of officers while frightened residents stayed locked in their homes.

A police bulletin identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest in the attack that sent panicked bowlers scrambling behind pins when shots rang out around 7 p.m. Card was described as a firearms instructor believed to be in the Army Reserve and assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will be held accountable for the shocking October 7 attack by Hamas militants, but that will only come after Israel’s war against the militant group.

In a nationally televised address Wednesday night, Netanyahu said he was busy plotting a ground invasion of Gaza, though he refused to say when that might happen. He also expressed sorrow over the attack, which allegedly killed more than 1,400 Israelis and saw over 200 others taken captive in Gaza.

The European Central Bank is ready to leave interest rates unchanged Thursday for the first time in over a year as the Israel-Hamas war spreads even more gloom over already downbeat prospects for Europe's economy.

It would be the bank's first meeting with no change after a torrid pace of 10 straight increases dating to July 2022 that pushed its key rate to a record-high 4%. The ECB would join the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England and others in holding borrowing costs steady — albeit at the highest levels in years — as inflation has eased.

An Israeli strike has killed the wife, son and young daughter of Al-Jazeera Arabic’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh.

Footage aired on the Qatar-based TV network showed the veteran journalist, still wearing his blue body armor marked “press,” weeping over his son’s corpse on a hospital floor.

Economic crises are rippling through the countries bordering Israel, raising the possibility of a chain reaction from the war with Hamas that further worsens the financial health and political stability of Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan and creates problems well beyond.

Each of the three countries is up against differing economic pressures that led the International Monetary Fund to warn in a September report that they could lose their "sociopolitical stability." That warning came shortly before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering a war that could easily cause economic chaos that President Joe Biden and the European Union would likely need to address.

Israeli troops and tanks launched a brief ground raid into northern Gaza overnight into Thursday, the military said, striking several militant targets in order to "prepare the battlefield" ahead of a widely expected ground invasion after more than two weeks of devastating air raids.

The raid came after the U.N. warned it is on the verge of running out of fuel in the Gaza Strip, forcing it to sharply curtail relief efforts in the territory, which has also been under a complete siege since Hamas' bloody rampage across southern Israel ignited the war earlier this month.