By Costas Pitas and Andrew MacAskill

March 7 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Britain is giving "serious thought" to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East, but added that the U.S. does not need them to win the war with Iran, in the latest clash between the military allies.

Trump has repeatedly criticised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggesting this week that he helped "ruin" the countries' historically close relationship after London blocked the U.S.'s initial use ‌of British bases to attack Iran.

President Donald Trump on Saturday blamed Iran for what the country's authorities said was a deadly strike on a school in the southern county of Minab.

"We think it was done by Iran. Because they are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

According to Iranian authorities, a strike hit a girls' elementary school last Saturday, killing more than 150 people, mostly students.

March 7 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday he had spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the situation in Iran and the Middle East and restated Kyiv's offer to help deal with Iranian drones.

"Ukraine has been fighting against (Iranian-designed) 'Shaheds' for years, and everyone acknowledges that no other country in the world has such experience," Zelenskiy said on Telegram of his conversation.

"We are ready to help and expect that our people will also receive the necessary support."

On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.

Iraq's Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.

Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.

Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.

US President Donald Trump attended the return Saturday of the bodies of the first six US soldiers killed during the escalating war with Iran.

Trump, wearing a white "USA" baseball cap, saluted as troops carried each flag-draped case from a military transport plane at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the remains of US troops killed overseas are returned to American soil.

By Samia Nakhoul and Parisa Hafezi

March 7 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has told Tehran that while it favours a diplomatic settlement to Iran's conflict with the United States, continued attacks on the kingdom and its energy sector could push Riyadh to respond in kind, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The message was conveyed before a speech on Saturday in which Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologised to neighbouring Gulf states for Tehran’s actions -- an apparent attempt to defuse regional anger over Iranian strikes that hit civilian targets.

Sri Lanka will treat Iranian sailors rescued from a torpedoed frigate according to international law, a minister said Saturday, following reports that Washington was pressuring Colombo to not repatriate them.

Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told a conference in New Delhi that Sri Lanka was caring for 32 sailors from the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena under Colombo's international treaty obligations.

The frigate was sunk by a US submarine on Wednesday just off Sri Lanka's southern coast.

Sri Lanka sent its navy to rescue survivors and recovered 84 bodies.

By Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis and Erin Banco

WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) - As the first explosions from Iran's retaliatory attack sounded across the United Arab Emirates last Saturday, the State Department was still scrambling to finalize a key bureaucratic task - securing approvals for at least three U.S. embassies in the region to evacuate non-essential personnel.

By Parisa Hafezi and Angus McDowall

DUBAI, March 7 (Reuters) - Iran's hierarchy is showing signs of fracturing over a war its leaders see as existential, with angry divisions between hardliners and more pragmatic factions laid bare by a row over President Masoud Pezeshkian's promise not to strike Gulf states.

Fissures within Iran's ruling elite were long suppressed under the iron rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but his killing a week ago has allowed them to spill out into the open as U.S. and Israeli strikes pile pressure on Tehran.

Turkey's foreign minister advised Saturday against efforts to cause a civil war inside Iran, while warning Tehran after NATO intercepted a Turkey-bound ballistic missile launched from Iran this week.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said any effort to stir up a civil war inside Iran in a bid to bring about regime change would be a "historic" mistake.

"We are against all scenarios that aim to instigate a civil war in Iran, that target ethnic or religious fault lines," Fidan told journalists in Istanbul.

"This is the most dangerous scenario," he added.