U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday pushed back against assertions that Israel isn't fully committed to the cease-fire proposal with Hamas that President Joe Biden outlined in late May at the White House.

"Israel has supplied this proposal. It has been sitting on the table for some time. Israel has not contradicted or walked that back," Sullivan said Thursday in Italy, where Biden was set to attend the annual Group of Seven leaders' summit. "To this day they stand behind the proposal."

A Group of Seven summit is opening Thursday with agreement on a U.S. proposal to back a $50 billion loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets as collateral, giving Kyiv a strong show of support even as Europe's political chessboard shifts to the right.

Diplomats confirmed that an agreement had been reached on the deal before the leaders even landed in southern Italy for the three-day summit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is on hand and is expected to sign a separate bilateral security agreement with U.S. President Joe Biden.

French national Louis Arnaud arrived in France on Thursday after he was released by Iran where he was imprisoned for over 20 months for allegedly taking part in nationwide protests.

Arnaud was greeted at Paris-Le-Bourget airport by his family in the presence of French Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Séjourné.

Authorities in Greece are closing down the Acropolis in Athens during the afternoon on Thursday for a second day as the country swelters under unseasonably high temperatures.

The Culture Ministry said the hilltop citadel, which is Greece's most popular ancient site, would be closed from midday to 5 p.m. (0900-1400 GMT) because of the heat.

Hezbollah launched rocket and drone attacks on several Israeli army bases and positions on Thursday, after an Israeli strike killed one of its senior commanders.

Hezbollah fighters launched "an attack with rockets and drones, targeting six barracks and military sites" while simultaneously flying "squadrons of explosive-laden drones" at three other Israeli bases, the group said in a statement.

The latest proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza has the support of the United States and most of the international community, but Hamas has not fully embraced it, and neither, it seems, has Israel.

Hamas this week accepted the broad outline but requested "amendments." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly disputed aspects of the plan, raising questions about Israel's commitment to what the U.S. says is an Israeli proposal.

Muslim pilgrims have been streaming into Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca ahead of the start of the Hajj later this week, as the annual pilgrimage returns to its monumental scale.

Saudi officials say more than 1.5 million foreign pilgrims have arrived in the country by Tuesday, the vast majority by air, from across the world. More are expected, and hundreds of thousands of Saudis and others living in Saudi Arabia will also join them when the pilgrimage officially begins on Friday.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have launched a boat-borne bomb attack against a commercial ship in the Red Sea, authorities said, the latest escalation despite a U.S.-led campaign trying to protect the vital waterway.

The use of a boat loaded with explosives raised the specter of 2000's USS Cole attack, a suicide assault by al-Qaida on the warship when it was at port in Aden, killing 17 on board. Associated Press journalists saw the Cole in the Red Sea on Wednesday, now taking part in the U.S. campaign while visiting one of her sister ships, the USS Laboon.

At least 41 people died when a fire swept through a building that housed workers in Kuwait early Wednesday, and officials said the blaze appeared to be linked to code violations.

Interior Minister Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousuf Al-Sabah confirmed the toll and ordered the arrest of the building's owner during a visit to the site, local media reported.

For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and in the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way.

They're taking a smugglers' route home across remote mountainous terrain, on motorcycle or on foot, then traveling by car on a risky drive through government-held territory into opposition-held northwestern Syria, avoiding checkpoints or bribing their way through.