Antoine Khoury

Lebanese Foreign Minister Joe Raggi warned on Tuesday that Hezbollah risks pulling Lebanon into a new war at Iran’s behest, as efforts to enforce the June ceasefire between the group and Israel stall.

Lebanon's social affairs minister said Monday that about 700,000 Syrians have returned home from Lebanon, calling it proof of "the success of coordination between the two countries."

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy used a visit to Lebanon's presidential palace on Monday to promise Beirut more diplomatic backing, as fears grow that the war between Hezbollah and Israel could flare up again.

The European Union announced on Monday that it will set up a mission to train the Lebanese army and security forces, separate from the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL.

Syria's Internal Security Forces have arrested Mard Mohammad, a former brigadier general in Bashar al-Assad's Republican Guard, known as the "Guardian of the Capital," the force said on its Telegram channel.

At least seven people were killed Wednesday "by gunfire" against a bus in Syria's central Homs province, the official SANA news agency reported. 

Syrian authorities announced Tuesday the arrest, in Daraa province in the country's south near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, of three members of a cell "affiliated with Hezbollah" that they said was planning attacks, including rocket launches.

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei paid tribute to former Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in a written statement marking the second anniversary of his killing in an Israeli strike. 

A series of explosions at a military site near the city of Aleppo, in northern Syria, wounded four people early Monday, the government announced. It marks the fourth such episode involving explosions in less than a month in a country still emerging from a long civil war that began in 2011.

Eleven people were killed Friday in an explosion of unknown origin at a military site in the Ayyash area, west of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, the country's Defense Ministry announced Saturday.

Syria's judiciary issued its first verdicts on Thursday in the trial over massacres of Alawites on the Syrian coast last year, sentencing a member of government forces to 20 years in prison, while two supporters of the deposed government received a death sentence and a life sentence, respectively.

Lebanese MP Nadim Gemayel of the Kataeb party said that his party does not oppose Lebanon making peace with neighboring Israel, which still occupies more than 600 square kilometers of Lebanese territory and has razed dozens of border villages in its war against Hezbollah.