Senior US officials are reportedly planning for a possible strike on Iran within days, according to a report.

The unconfirmed report from Bloomberg News on Thursday (Australian time) cited sources who revealed potential plans for an attack as soon as this weekend.

It came as CNN reported that US President Donald Trump has reviewed attack plans for Iran but was waiting to see if Tehran stepped back from its nuclear program.

Also on Thursday, the US sent a military aircraft to evacuate some of its embassy staff and their families from Israel.

In its latest security alert, the embassy said it had “no announcement about assisting private US citizens to depart at this time”. It followed Ambassador Mike Huckabee posting on X that the embassy was “working on evacuation flights & cruise ship departures”.

The latest official update from the White House is only that Trump remains undecided on US action in Iran. Publicly, Trump has said he will not confirm if he has decided to order a US strike on Iran.

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said outside the White House.

Elsewhere, Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to help mediate an end to the near week-old conflict between Israel and Iran – an offer Trump said he rejected.

Speaking to leaders of international news agencies, Putin said “it’s a delicate issue”.

“In my view, a solution could be found,” he said.

Putin said he had shared Moscow’s proposals with Iran, Israel and the US. His comments follow a mediation offer he made in a call with Trump last weekend.

Trump said on Wednesday that he had told Putin to keep focused on finding an endgame to his own conflict with Ukraine.

“I said, ‘Do me a favour, mediate your own’,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Vladimir, let’s mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later’.”

The comments represented a shift for Trump, who earlier this week said he was “open” to Putin’s offer to mediate in the Middle East.

Putin, who met the news leaders on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, emphasised that Russia had a trusting relationship with Iran and built its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Australians flee war zones

As concerns grow that the US might enter the conflict, about 1200 Australians in Israel have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs for help to leave, while a further 1500 and family members have sought help to leave Iran.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said a small group left Israel via a land crossing on Wednesday and that the department is looking for more ways to evacuate Australians.

“Obviously, the situation on the ground is fluid,” she told ABC News on Thursday.

Among the latest developments in the region, Israel’s military has struck Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, hours after it warned local people to evacuated.

The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that proceeded strikes.

The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometres south-west of Tehran.

Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons.

Iranian state television confirmed the attack on Thursday afternoon. It said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had been evacuated before the attack.

Israel’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, said Soroko hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba had been hit by a ballistic missile,.

Unverified footage on social media showed people running through corridors filled with dust and detritus and doctors standing outside amid wreckage from the building.

A spokesperson for the hospital reported “damage to the hospital and extensive damage in various areas. We are currently assessing the damage, including injuries. We ask the public not to come to the hospital at this time.”

The seventh day of airstrikes came a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected the idea of surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them”.

Trump said Iranian officials had reached out about negotiations including a possible meeting at the White House but “it’s very late to be talking”, he said.

“Unconditional surrender, that means I’ve had it.”

-with AAP