U.S. President Donald Trump said the military could end its Iran offensive in two to three weeks and will shift responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz to countries that rely on it for oil and shipping as the White House announced a prime-time presidential address Wednesday evening on the war.

Trump said Tuesday that U.S. forces would end operations in Iran "very soon," evoking the timeline of two to three weeks as his administration pursues talks with Iranian authorities while continuing its aerial campaign.

The Lebanese army said its forces have largely withdrawn from some border towns as Israeli troops continue to push a ground invasion into the country.

The military said in a statement that troops had to reposition to prevent being dispersed and cut off from support lines "as a result of the escalation of the Israeli aggression".

Beirut is bursting.

It's been a month since Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel after the U.S.-Israeli attack on its patron, Iran, triggering Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and a ground invasion. Since then, more than 1 million people from southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs have fled. Many have crammed into the ever-tighter spaces of the country's capital where the bombs have not yet fallen.

Yemen's Houthis on Wednesday claimed a missile attack targeting Israel that they said was launched jointly with their backer Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group -- the third such attack by the Houthis since they entered the Middle East war.

The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen said Wednesday they fired a barrage of ballistic missiles toward Israel.

UN’s refugee agency said more than 200,000 people crossed from Lebanon into Syria in March after the Israeli war.

The vast majority – nearly 180,000 – were Syrians returning to their war-battered country, in addition to more than 28,000 Lebanese.

The Russian vessel Anatoly Kolodkin docked Tuesday at the Cuban port of Matanzas laden with 730,000 barrels of oil, marking the first time in three months that an oil tanker reached the island.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had allowed the shipment to proceed despite its ongoing energy blockade.

Satellite images are beginning to be released giving a glimpse into the toll of the Iran war, with ships ablaze in an Iranian port and destroyed buildings at American bases in the region.

Information has so far been scarce about the damage being done across the Middle East, particularly when it's inside closed military facilities, since the war started on Feb. 28.

As the Iran war intensifies, President Donald Trump has prioritized efforts to calm the financial markets — trying to keep oil prices from exploding upward, stocks from cratering and interest rates from surging.

When the markets have flashed danger, Trump has been quick with a social media post or a remark to claim the war he launched last month could soon end. He's publicly declared that the markets are doing better than he expected, even with the S&P 500 stock index declining over the past five weeks and the global oil benchmark up roughly 60%.

Europe's inflation rate rose to 2.5% in March, according to official figures released Tuesday, as the Iran war sent fuel prices sharply higher.

The annual rate for the 21 countries using the euro currency compared to 1.9% for February before the war started and blocked supplies of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf.

Top European diplomats visited Ukraine on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of atrocities committed in a town near Kyiv by Russia's invading forces four years ago.

With U.S.-led efforts to end the war on hold and Washington's attention gripped by the conflict in the Middle East, European governments are keen to keep a spotlight on the continent's biggest land war in decades, now in its fifth year.